Sylvia Maier

Malin Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent work by the Brooklyn-based artist Sylvia Maier. Featuring a series of large-scale figurative paintings, the works in About Sangomas and Soothsayers and Mischief depict the environs of the Flatbush and Prospect Park areas of Brooklyn where the artist lives and works - powerfully evoking the unique ethnic and cultural plurality of her community.

Many of the paintings in the exhibition feature friends and neighbors who sat for the artist, and the works are imbued with intense psychological complexity and occasional phantasmagorical elements. Maier combines a naturalistic approach to figuration with tones of magic realism. Working extensively with live models, Maier applies classical sensibilities regarding form, composition and the rendering of light to contemporary - often intensely personal - subjects. A recurring theme throughout the exhibition is the artist’s engagement with the Haitian-American community of Flatbush and its diasporic culture.

About Sangomas and Soothsayers and Mischief is Sylvia Maier’s inaugural exhibition with Malin Gallery.

Sylvia Maier (b. 1969, New York, NY) is a Brooklyn-based painter known for her portraiture. Much of her work focuses on depicting residents of the Flatbush area of Brooklyn, where she has lived for three decades. Maier studied at the School of Visual Arts in NYC and also attended the National Academy of Design and the New York Academy of Art. Maier also studied extensively at the Art Student’s League under the tutelage of Ron Sherr and as a protege of the influential figurative painter Harvey Dinnerstein. Maier is a recipient of the Greenshield Award.

Previous exhibitions included solo presentations at the Parrish Art Museum (Southampton, New York); Bernaducci Meisel Gallery (New York); Bernaducci Gallery (New York, NY); Forum Gallery (Frankfurt, Germany); and Fairleigh Dickinson University (Teaneck, NJ). She lives in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn with her family and dogs.