BA Visual Arts, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK)
Education
BA (Hons) Fine Art (Painting), Wimbledon College of Arts - University of the Arts London (UAL)
Pre-university education ('Gymnasium', EQF level 4, cum laude), Stedelijk Gymnasium Johan van Oldenbarnevelt
Orientation year, Gerrit Rietveld Academy
Apprenticed to painter Frans Koppelaar
2020-2022
2017-2019
2011-2017
2015-2017
2014-2015
Ghent
London
Amersfoort
Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Skills
Imaginative
Self-critical
Perseptive
Considerate
Persevering
Creative
Resourceful
Enthusiastic
Worshipful Company of Painters-Stainers Scholarship (First Prize)
Awards
KNAW Education Prize, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Second Prize)
Rijksmuseum Junior Fellowship (Nomination)
2018
2017
2017
London
Amsterdam
Amsterdam
.png)
Maura Polano opened an artist studio in BOGOTÁ Creative Hub
Personal professional development
2022-present
Haarlem
2023
Maura Polano joined The Vishal, an artist association and visual arts centre.
Haarlem
Maura intertwines literary references with autobiographical elements. Her compositions often defy simple narrative resolution: they remain open to interpretation. The viewer is encouraged to have his own personal response to the work. Maura's paintings are mysteries for the unraveling: we are invited to use our own imagination.
Maura finds it exciting to paint closely packed scenes, containing a great repertoire of characters, objects and motifs. She realizes the danger of making her compositions too complex, cryptic and confounding. Of course she doesn't want us to walk away with furrowed brow, frowning in frustration. She wants her paintings to be open to interpretation in a way that draws the viewer in. She hopes to elicit an imaginative and emotional response. She wants her paintings to be slightly uncanny: at once enigmatic and oddly familiar.
Viewing the work
Maura's paintings are based on fairy tales, novels, plays, and myths. But she takes artistic liberties and transforms the written word into a figurative language of her own. As the original story is dragged across the canvas, the time factor changes: different moments in the story merge within the picture plane; and the original plotline is broken up by and interlaced with personal associations. According to the artist, the undoing of chronology is part of the delight of doing pictures. Maura's compositions conflate time, space, fiction and reality.
Temporality and pictorial space
Maura always carries a camera with her to capture interesting moments. She begins her creative process by making photo collages. When she is happy with her imagery, she constructs a three-dimensional model. She employed 3D modelling software, but she has abandoned this practice in favour of wax sculpting. Maura uses these wax models to create an interesting shadow-play. The next step is to make some preliminary drawings to refine the composition and an elaborate final drawing at the dimensions of her canvas. She transfers this underdrawing to the canvas and then begins painting.
Working methods
Maura engages the tradition of painting, employing seventeenth century painting techniques: she paints on a toned ground and begins with a monochromatic underpainting in earth pigments or shades of grey. Maura has done extensive research on seventeenth century painting techniques. She feels especially drawn to paintings by Vermeer, Pieter de Hoogh, Pieter Janssens Elinga en Georges de la Tour. She admires their sensitive attention to the play of light and shadow; the depth of their transparent glazes; their balanced compositions; their mastery of perspective; and the narrative quality of their works. She attempts to combine their painting methods with contemporary colour vivacity and surrealist, dream-like visuals.
Painting technique
Maura looks for a certain degree of ambiguity in her work: in terms of content (ambiguous narratives), but also visually. She is interested in the interlocking of image elements, for example through visual repetition: the posture of a figure is echoed by the shape of another object in the scene. Maura also locks image elements together by positioning them along the same compositional line: a diagonal that hits on various objects and figures in the picture. She finds it exciting to juggle elements so close together that they seem to flow into each other; or to create overlap in such a way that image elements seem to break into each other's contours. In short, Maura wants her objects and figures to be absorbed by the background, by their shadow, or by each other. She has not yet been able to achieve this to her own satisfaction, but she continues to experiment with this.
Visual interests
Maura's artistic references include Paula Rego, Edward Povey and Gustave Doré. She feels drawn to their work, because it is playful and story-based. She admires paintings by Vermeer, Pieter de Hoogh, Pieter Janssens Elinga and Georges de la Tour: their sensitive attention to light, shade, perspective, and compositional balance. Maura is interested in the interlocking of visual elements: a characteristic seen in works by John Stezaker, Kenny Harris and Käthe Kollwitz (viz. Kollwitz’ ‘Death, Woman and Child’). Maura likes Euan Uglow’s geometrical compositions. And she feels an affinity with Giorgio De Chirico: she loves the dramatic lighting and the feelings of isolation and alienation that his paintings evoke.
Inspiration
ARTISTS STATEMENT
Maura's paintings explore personal struggles - anorexia, sight problems, social isolation - and universal emotions. She is interested in our inner lives: feelings; thoughts; memories; unconscious thought processes; fantasies; insecurities; inner conflicts; struggles of self-expression; self-deception; and how the world outside bends to the emotional logic in our heads.
She is also interested in human relationships, especially the communication barriers and clattered silences that isolate people.
Themes
.png)
.png)
Maura Polano (b. 1999) is a promising young painter, working in a distinct magical-realist style. She is interested in human psychology and visual storytelling. Maura draws inspiration from literature, children's stories, myths and personal experiences. Her latest oil paintings comprise compositions drawn from the arrangement of wax models. These scale models serve to create a shadow-play. Maura's paintings evoke an uncanny atmosphere through the dramatic patterning of light and shadow.