They met
in the Bay Area of California in the 1980's. My mother, an art student at Sonoma State University, my father a worker at the local government submarine base in California. Hailing from a small island in the pacific, Guam my Mother was the oldest of 8 siblings. My father similarly, one of eight was raised on a nearby farm in Vacaville CA. Married in 1989, four siblings preceded my arrival in 1995, Megan, Chris, Sarah Mitch and Myself. I was born Meredith Catherine Maher at Kaiser Hospital in Vallejo CA.
Two Weeks
after I was born and following the closure of the government submarine base in California my father took a position at the Groton Sub Base in Groton Connecticut, moving my family of 7 moved across the country to a small New England town, Montville.
Early on
I spent a lot of time alone in my imagination playing because most my siblings were at school. I would often draw for hours or wait by the stairs at the end of the day for them to come home.
Loud at home
But very quiet at school in the early years. Money was tight growing up and we had to get creative as a family. By the time I arrived there weren't a lot of toys that weren't shabby hand-me downs from older siblings. Art & drawing was one of the only spaces where I never felt limited by my tools. I could create a world of anything I wanted. I felt school was my old road to build a life for myself so I participated in as many clubs and activities as I could so I could get into a good college and afford all the art supplies I could have ever wanted to build all the ideas in my head.
WORKWORKWORK
I started working at 16 as an ice cream server, a Pharmacy tech, a retail employee at Forever 21, a hostess at a restaurant, a front desk worker at an ice rink, and then straight after college an associate at a Wealth Management company. Any chance I could get outside of work or school I experimented with new ideas. Although encouraged by art teachers to pursue a career in the arts, I turned my back scared to go into the unknown.
A "practical" creative outlet
is what I called of my quest for a fixer upper spending 80% of my time in 2019 and 100% of my savings and searching for a home I could 1.) Afford and 2.) Pour the excess creative energy I had and 3.) finally have my own space to work on my art projects properly. October of 2019 I found my 220 year old perfect project and began documenting the process on my personal instagram ( meredith.maher)
It was not
before long that my art started consuming more and more of my day to day thoughts and actions. When the pandemic hit in 2020 I realized what was truly important to me. After separating from my job in 2021 and between every renovation project I kept thinking of more ideas for art pieces I could fill my walls with. And now I finally had space to store all of the odds and ends I saved for mixed media pieces.
The puzzle
works started for me as using techniques I learned from oil painting in an impressionist style. I loved the return of collaging, a favorite technique from years past. The idea of found pieces. Abandoned pieces and things that are "supposed" to be of a bigger whole taken to create something else. To find a new belonging. I see a lot of life this way. In February of 2021 I started to share my art of Tiktok to find others who felt had the same sensibilities.
I felt
a lot of the the spirit of my oil works which deal with humor, loneliness, love and longing translated across all of my art. I love working with mixed media and experimenting to create new concepts for emotions which are best explained through art. I hope sincerely I will have enough time in my life to make all of my ideas come to life and the large scale works I want to create. I wish to have the ability to share them with others who can feel and understand them for themselves.
NFTs, Maps, Decor
After renovating much of my home I started to make a lot of works I felt could be easily accessibly to others for their homes. In 2021 I started selling illustrated maps of local towns, humorous crosshatched NFTs of Presidents in Drag & limited prints of my higher end pieces. New drops & works always come through Tiktok my favorite community for the arts.
