Maxine Spector is a self-taught multimedia artist based in Lake Worth Beach. Her practice, which spans from painting to ceramic clay, is entirely intuitive and created without prior planning or sketching. In 2019, she began a series entitled 1001 Heads, consisting of over 1000 clay portraits.
Maxine, please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in creating art.
I’m from West Palm Beach. I have been creating art since I was a child. As a matter of fact, I was creating backdrops for elementary school plays when I was at Belvedere Elementary School. I always have fun doing that! Creating art has simply been something that I needed to do my whole life. It helps me to be balanced as a person.
What inspires your creations? Who or what are your artistic influences?
I love all forms of art, but the visual arts are where I thrive. I actually paint to music. When I listen to music as I work, the music I’m listening to will often inspire what I’m creating. One of my paintings was inspired by the Cocteau Twins.
Tell us a little bit about your process.
I have two sides of myself as an artist, plein-air work and studio work. When I paint en plein air, I sit outside and look at something and paint what I see. For me, this process is my teacher. It’s a different way of painting and thinking. For my studio work, I bring in some of my smaller paintings to the studio. These serve as thumbnail inspirations to create artworks from my imagination.
My 1001 Heads project drew inspiration from a large installation that I did of a series of faces/people with gold leaf. After I finished, I said to a friend that I would like to create them in 3-D. She said, “Do it,” but I had never worked in clay and sculpture.
What is something that you’ve learned from your experience as an artist that guides you today?
I can tell you that when I get into the studio and put on some of my favorite music (there are so many great artists that I can’t name them all), I start to feel really good. There are difficult days, just like everyone has in their lives and work. But sometimes, on a difficult day, when I pit on good music and have a nice cup of tea, I can lose myself in my work. I often find that I work through whatever is in my mind and in my heart. It’s all a part of the artistic process.
How do you choose the media and materials in which to create your art?
I like painting with oil paint the most. I like mixing colors in oil because they don’t dry so quickly. I’ll work with acrylic for backgrounds, but only when I can go over it with oil. I think oil is very forgiving because it stays wet for a long time. For the surface, I like wood, paper, and canvas.
For my clay heads, I was most inspired by the glazing process. My painting background has helped me with my glazing, and I believe the glazing technique will help me with my painting the future. They are very similar, but still quite different. With glazing, there is such a variation between what you see and what you get once it has been through the firing process. When I did the 1001 Heads, I found that the glaze sometimes didn’t go as planned, but then I thought that it was simply like all the different people we see walking down the streets of New York City — no one is the same.
Can you highlight some of your notable exhibitions that have been particularly meaningful to you?
I recently had a solo exhibition with mtn space gallery, where they were able to host all 1001 of my ceramic heads along with a series of large-scale paintings — it was a wonderful experience! I’ve also been having great “house shows” for years now here I empty my house and curate exhibitions. It’s a very intimate and rewarding experience to bring artists together.
Tell us more about the art on the cover, Our Father V.
While I was working on my 1001 Heads, I started thinking about the interconnectedness of human life, and how all life on earth lives under this one amazing sky. So, I started painting the sky. I worked intuitively with no sketches. I sat and mixed colors and started painting. It’s my interpretation of the sky we live under. It is a six-panel piece that is quite large. I decided to call it Our Father I — VI. I recently heard the Our Father prayer for the first time. It wasn’t a part of my childhood. So, as I was creating these six panels, I was thinking of that and decided to call it Our Father. Not in a way that it has to be the prayer, but in the unification of all living things under this all-encompassing sky.
Finally, what would you like patrons of Palm Beach Opera to know about you and your work?
I hope you enjoy my paintings!