Members’ Foyer
ETCHINGS AND OTHER ARTWORKS
Maureen Paxton
MARCH 8 – APRIL 8, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION: MARCH 8, 2024 | 7-10PM
Image Credit: Maureen Paxton: ETCHINGS AND OTHER ARTWORKS 2024, Courtesy of the artist.
“The six etchings in this exhibition were done, while not intended as illustration, to accompany my poems in a collection titled She SeeSaw, still in progress. I have received one OAC grant, plus support from the Hamilton Enrichment Fund towards producing both aspects of the book.
Whatever my medium, I tend to focus on the figure as both seen and seer. I don’t consider it portraiture: I’m attempting to create and explore imagined characters, as well as aspects of their being. I find some propulsion from theatre and my love of it, theatre as a shallow box with wings, its contents a distillation of entire worlds and within itself, a world of its own.
The same preoccupations are present in the paintings I’ve chosen for this exhibition bar, perhaps, Gay Paree No. 2. No figures per se, no actors except for the buildings themselves. Small stages within the larger.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Maureen Paxton writes, draws, paints and as of January, 2023, began printmaking at Centre3 in Hamilton. She’d been awarded a Hamilton Enrichment Fund grant intended to support a visual-literary project called She SeeSaw, a collection of poems accompanied by (reproductions of) etchings. At that point, she knew little about the medium but with tech support and mentoring by Centre3 artist-managers, learned enough to begin work.
She has taught at what’s now called OCADU; at Sheridan College (Animation and Art Fundamentals Faculties); at a privately-run animation school (Max the Mutt). She’s written for theatre and television and has been published in various Canadian literary journals. She’s also the recipient of several Ontario Arts Council writing grants.
Hamilton has been home since 2008, after thirty-four years in Toronto. Driving up and down the mountain is still a thrill.