Maggie Haslam
Small Monster Motherhood Edition, No. 1 (I am busy too)
ink on handmade cotton paper
21 x 17 in.
Maggie Haslam was born in Washington D.C. and now works and lives in New York City. She primarily works with water-based paints on paper to explore the inherent contradiction of the act of artistic creation. In her text based work, she extends the painted conversations beyond just visual interactions into a sphere where both the written language and the aesthetics of the words on the paper visually work synergistically to engage the viewer.
These written works are stories, dichotomies, and meditations that touch on thoughts, memories, imaginations or emotions. As with her paintings, the text based pieces are experiments set in motion by the artist, but the resulting experience and meaning is not constrained by her. All of her work culminates in a final product born from the artist and then left to the own devises of the medium itself.
The Small Monster Motherhood Edition project specifically references a series of Maggie’s paintings from 2015 titled Small Monsters. She used the forms from the 2015 paintings to explore the repetitive and ambivalent text in Motherhood Edition.
© Maggie Haslam