Maria haag
ABOUT THE ARTIST
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Maria Haag lives and works in Dallas, Texas. She grew up between North Dakota and Kansas. After moving to Kansas, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas and her Master of Fine Arts degree in drawing and painting from the University of North Texas. She received the Charles and Margaret Pollack art purchase award from the Mulvane Museum in Topeka, Kansas, and in 2017, 2018 and 2019 she participated in Dallas in Prizzi, a community inspired mural project in Prizzi, Sicily. She has participated in group shows at the New Orleans Contemporary Art Center, Project Gallery V in New York, Austin College in Sherman, Texas, Art Center of the Bluegrass in Danville, Kentucky, and Kansas City Artists Coalition, among others. Solo exhibitions include the Cora Stafford Gallery in Denton, Texas, 500x Gallery and Pencil on Paper Gallery in Dallas, Texas.
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ARTIST STATEMENT
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The embodied creature is caught in a cycle of destruction and transformation. In flux, it defies definition. I capture bodies hovering between decay and transformation, broken images whirling through a maelstrom. The physical surfaces I create mirror the transitions of physical and spiritual bodies. Their fragility is reflected in broken lines and crusted layers of paper, charcoal, paint, and collage.
Characters and spaces that have informed my imagination construct my work: heroes, saints, and villains, all set in a framework of abandoned farms and empty towns. Pieced together, these fragments tell new stories, possibilities of new realities. I reveal dreams and currents concealed beneath the ordinary by a conscious violence, digitally and physically fracturing and combining images, tearing and marking over previous layers to create a puncture in what is, in order to open space for what lies beneath. |
