Biography

 

For thirty years Maggie Siner has been a quiet voice in the contemporary art world. Her paintings are held in special esteem for their enduring qualities: a perfect sense of the fleeting moment, exquisite clarity of light, bold brushwork, fine tuning of color, delicately balanced structure, and the captured moment of absolute recognition. Her images range from the intimate - a handful of cherries, to the monumental - earth and sky, to whimsical combinations of objects, all offering surprise, intelligence and a sensual mastery of traditional media.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Siner began her studies at the Art Students League of New York in 1968, graduated from Boston University (BFA) in 1973 and American University (MFA) in 1976. She has lived for extended periods in France, China and Italy. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums and is in hundreds of private collections around the world.

Siner’s work is classically derived yet contemporary; an almost abstract expressionist handling belies the strong underlying structure. She is sensitive to the slightest nuance of color and brushmark and through this, light, atmosphere and form are evoked in their finest changes. A miracle of resolution occurs as one steps back from her small abstract painting and it suddenly resolves into a stunning moment of real life.

Working exclusively from life, she is one of a diminishing number of artists who use direct visual perception to translate the human experience into material form. Her years in China intensified the lively calligraphic quality of her brushwork, so active, yet accurate. Her subject matter is almost incidental as it could be anything from the commonplace to the bizarre, whatever appears in her visual field to tempt. Figures are touching, powerful and alive, still-lives are anything but still and any small corner of nature becomes important from her rendering of it. A sparkling play of light and shadow emphasizes the momentary nature of vision and time.

Siner is also a devoted teacher who has influenced a generation of painters. She has been on the faculty of l’Institute d’Universités Américaines and Lacoste School of Art in France (Cleveland Institute of Art), a visiting professor at Xiamen University in China, artist-in-residence at Savannah College of Art and Design, Dean of Faculty at the Washington Studio School and teaches master classes around the country. Noted for her challenging courses and ability to verbalize the non-verbal issues of painting she is a frequent guest artist and public speaker much appreciated for her revealing lectures on the internal workings of painting.

In 1976 she moved to France, taught painting and art history at European university programs and exhibited in Aix-en-Provence, Paris and Marseilles. She also studied medicine at the Faculté de Médicine and frequently performed as a singer and musician. In the 1980’s she taught anatomy at Georgetown Medical School and completed facial reconstructions for law enforcement. She is well known for her expertise in artistic anatomy and human movement, evident in her sensual figurative sculpture. In 1991 she visited and lectured at six major art academies in China, after which she spent a year teaching at Xiamen University and has returned there often. She is also a devoted opera fan. Her home is in France and northern Virginia.