About The Artist

I have always been drawn to what is easy to overlook. As the daughter of a Jamaican mother and a father from Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, I inherited a love for two small islands whose beauty has brought me to tears. Jamaica says, Wi likkle but wi tallawah—we may be small, but we are mighty. Growing up in the Chicagoland, with these islands at my roots, taught me that small does not mean insignificant. I carry that knowing into my paintings: I don’t give overlooked people and moments their value by painting them. I simply put a spotlight on the beauty I already see in what others might pass by.

Drawing has always been an impulse. As a child, I filled church pamphlets and school papers with doodles that unapologetically invaded the page, following whatever wanted to flow out of me without worrying about what it would become. Later, copying superheroes from comics gave me the thrill of capturing likeness. I carried both instincts—unselfconscious play and the desire to really see a person—through earning my B.A. in Art from UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture. Now, motherhood and my work as a Teaching Artist in Residence at Kingsway Preparatory School continually call me back to that childlike freedom.

Maia (pronounced my-ee-uh) means nurturer, mother, and midwife, which feels increasingly appropriate to the way I create. The nurturer in me pays attention to who is being overlooked and listens for the heart beneath what is being said. I believe each person carries a particular expression of Love, and my paintbrush searches for it. I listen for the heart, especially in those easily overlooked, then follow that thread toward who they are still becoming—not controlling the outcome, but making room for what is already emerging. Painting, then, feels a little like midwifery: helping bring forth what was already being formed.

Working in water-mixable oils, I create dreamy figurative worlds that begin in reality but hardly stay there. Swimming brushstrokes, washy color, handwritten language, and doodles allow the present to open into both memory and possibility. Sometimes hearts emerge like I have a crush on the moment. In a way, I do.

These small expressions of love give me butterflies in my eyes.

At the center is my relationship with my Creator and my journey to live in Love—not just visit it. I paint what I see and what I sense beyond natural sight, hoping viewers leave more awake to how they are loved, how they love, who has gone unseen, and what might still be brought forth in them.

Love,

Maia Faith