WHAT THEY ARE SAYING…
“The abstract paintings of Maryanne Hawes show a convergence of interior and exterior landscapes.
Her work is intuitive, sensitive to the resonance of place, often representing what we can’t see as much as what we can see. In her colour palette and expressive marks one can pick out the explosion of sea-spray on a cluster of rock, and equally a feeling of excitement, serenity, even levity, in the brush-marks.
Her work occupies this harmonious duplicity through its splicing or fragmentation of differing places and mood. Thus, it is an abstract sense of things, of place, that comes across rather than a concrete understanding, making her work infinitely explorative.
She explores ‘what lies beneath’, in her work, both internally and geographically; the interplay of experience and memory, what is retained and eroded, to create a complex and capricious mental panorama. There is often a clear collaging, where each section is at once contained and part of the whole.
There might be an implied background of rolling hills, with sprawling white graffiti-like letters stratified onto it, ensuring a conversation between stillness and agitation. For me, her work is always absorbing, its connection between the emotional-linguistic and the intuitive-visual confabulating exquisitely.”
Kate Reeve-Edwards
“Maryanne’s fundamental work is self-knowledge, but it has much wider effects. There is active hope and intention in what she does, and strength ripples out into the world from her centre. A public ignorant or indifferent to how the natural world sustains us in our minds and bodies won’t care if it is broken. In times of crisis it is visual artists like Maryanne as well as musicians, film-makers, photographers and poets who have the power to connect emotionally with audiences, to communicate complex ideas that implicate us, rouse us from indifference and show us why we should care. And it’s an urgent and critical task.”
Dr Victoria Powell
“I want to thank you for helping me understand what art means to me. Until joining you on your art journey – through the wonder of social media – I have allowed my lack of knowledge to affect my choices, limiting myself to mass produced ‘acceptable’ art! I began to realise that when I looked at your work it spoke to me and evoked different feelings, dependent on my own mood I would see different things, would notice a change in a piece that I hadn’t picked up on before…. The penny dropped and I realised I kinda get it – art is what speaks to you, it’s whatever you want it to be! I will always be grateful – thank you.”
“Oh goodness, Maryanne! It is BEAUTIFUL! It makes me hold my breath. My eyes follow every edge, shape and layer. I am so pleased, we have just redecorated so it will be the first piece on the wall.”