BIOGRAPHY Maxine Graham Price was born on an Army Base and grew up in a military family. She moved with them to many postings in the southern and eastern areas of the United States as well as Germany. Being a shy child and finding it difficult to make new friends easily, Price found the one constant in her life, other than family, to be her ability to draw and paint. Her first remembered experience in art was in kindergarten. Price’s teacher remarked positively in front of the class about a face she had drawn and proceeded to post it on the bulletin board. Price believes that teacher’s encouraging remark thrust her into the lifelong pursuit of being an artist. She studied art in college, earning a BFA in studio art (that included four years of life drawing) from the University of Texas at Austin and in many ways has never stopped learning about art and painting. She has always liked faces and had a successful career for many years doing portraits in black and white pencil, watercolor and oils. Many of her oil portraits hang in the collections of the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University and St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. In 1992 Price decided to leave portraiture and make independent painting a full time pursuit. She began a journey of experimentation and exploration, working in various media. She studied with many well known teachers, including Skip Lawrence, Doug Walton and Leo Smith (watercolors), Maxine Masterfield (liquid inks and acrylics), Mary Wilbanks (collage) and Ray Vanilla and Ann Templeton (oils). Price was encouraged in her intent to work more from her imagination and ultimately she developed a method and style of working with oil and palette knife that is recognizably individual and unique. Price began showing her new creative work in many juried outdoor shows in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Along the way she has gained gallery representation and has shown in galleries in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. Price has participated in over 20 one-woman gallery exhibitions and many dozens of two person, three-person and group gallery exhibitions. In 2017 a major retrospective of her work was held in the Royston Nave Memorial Museum in Victoria, Texas. She has worked with several art consultant firms that have commissioned large paintings for hotels and resorts from coast to coast. Also in 2017, her painting, “In Transition”, a 48″x48″ oil, was chosen by the Art In Embassies Program of the U.S. Department of State to be exhibited at the United States Ambassador’s Residence in Lome, Togo in West Africa. Post college, Price lived in Austin, Texas until she moved to Wimberley, Texas in 1996 where she currently resides. Her work is shown in Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Wimberley, Texas and in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “ Maxine Price works in many different series but works equally well in them all. One reason for this is the evolved and consistent level in which she works. Price has great facility with her chosen technique, an instinctive sense of color and harmonic composition. Her choices, placements and handling of deep saturated color are inspired and cannot be taught. Her work is always fresh, alive and never overworked. This comes only from experience. Price makes the most of the impasto effects and has a sure and confident gestural hand. These paintings have great appeal and the sculptural effect of the paintings provides them with a corpo and presence that gives them the impression of being objects themselves.”David GenovesiDirector, Artrom GalleryRome, Italy ARTIST STATEMENT The focus of my work for the most part is abstraction or non-representational painting. I concentrate on texture, color harmony, design, composition and a layering method to achieve texture. My approach is intuitive, exploratory and experimental. I find inspiration in nature, dilapidated buildings, rocks and rusty things as well as in my dreams and writings. For over 20 years I have been working primarily with oils using palette knives in an effort to capture layers and textures that are not achievable with just a brush. With the palette knife I work wet into wet, layering thicker pigment over thinner pigment. This becomes a journey with unpredictable detours and outcomes which must be resolved along the way. Once I begin, I work spontaneously and intuitively, allowing the painting itself to lead me to the next stroke. For me, painting with some degree of speed is a necessary part of the process of working wet into wet. It allows me to be able to scratch and scrape into the wet surface and allows the layers of pigment to interact in ways that can’t happen once a painting is dry. I like the final results to show the energy and emotion that are a part of the creation of that painting. The residue of accidental happenings can also contribute to keeping my work fresh, exciting, alive and full of unplanned surprises. Recently, I have begun a new body of work that combines oil paint with cold wax. This is also a layering process but it is different in that there is a slower drying time allowing the surface, not only to be added to, but subtracted from, and is workable for longer periods of time. I still and will always work with oils and the palette knife for the excitement and energy it brings to my work but I’m enjoying the slower process of exploring and experimenting with oil with cold wax as it allows me to to achieve a greater depth that retains the history of each painting’s journey. RESUME Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Studio Art, University of Texas at Austin Teaching Experience: Private instruction to groups and individuals in painting, drawing, and portraiture Work Experience: Book Designer, University of Texas Press; Graphic Designer, University of Texas at Austin; Free Lance Commercial Artist; Portrait Artist; Co-owner of J.Max Designs, custom designs of large fabric wall hangings and paintings; Interior Designer; Fine Artist and painter showing in galleries in the Southwest United States. I have done commission work for Soho Myriad for several years. These works show in resorts, hotels and hospitals throughout the United States. I have exhibited internationally through the United States Art In Embassies program in Leon Togo and Malabo, Equatorial Guinea in Central Africa.