Maria Calandra

Walking in the wild plays a major role in my artistic life. I have always been mesmerized by the repeating lines and colors in reflected water, ancient rocks and twisted tree trunks or roots. Channeling a stream of consciousness, I pull from both the real and imagined while using a form of automatic painting to guide me. I try to make connections between that which I have observed and that which I remember. I aim to liberate my thoughts and experiences from any boundaries of the rational. The paintings are dense with detail and I strive to make them as alive and wild as the lands that inspired them. Photos taken while hiking, from coast to coast and even abroad, are used as a visual springboard. But, the work quickly departs from there to the memory of a place and the feeling I had while in it. I always begin painting a particular place while listening to the same music that I listened to when I was physically in that place. Undulating sounds and vibrations influence most brush strokes. Music helps to guide my marks while keeping them improvisational and unexpected — even to their maker. 

Maria Calandra (b. 1976, London, England) received an MFA in Painting from Cornell University in 2006 and a BFA in Painting from Ohio University in 1999. She has had solo exhibitions at Steve Turner Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Heroes Gallery (New York, NY) and Sardine Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). Group exhibitions include Essex Flowers (NY), Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (NY), G/ART/EN Gallery (Como, Italy), Andrew Edlin Gallery (NY), Shrine Gallery (NY), Geoffrey Young Gallery (MA), 1969 Gallery (NY), Shoot the Lobster/Martos Gallery (NY), and Johansson Projects (Oakland, CA). She has been reviewed and written about in Time Out New York, The Washington Post, The New York Sun and The New York Times and featured in Maake Magazine, FUKT Magazine based in Berlin, and ArtMaze Magazine. Maria will be in the Contemporary Art Now fair (CAN) this summer in Ibiza, Spain curated by Saša Bogojev. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Maria is also the artist and writer behind the online project Pencil in the Studio, where she visits with artists for the day and draws their studio and artworks. The project spans 11 years and nearly 100 studio visits. pencilinthestudio.com

CV

Maake Magazine “Q&A with Maria Calandra,” 2017 by Emily Burns
“The drawings and writings I make for Pencil in the Studio are a big part of my practice. But there are other parts too, unrelated to the Pencil in the Studio project, and still rooted in drawing. Both stem from parallel considerations of space, experience, and detail. Lately I have been trying to channel a stream of consciousness — pulling from both the real and imagined…” Link

New York Times “Inaugural Group Exhibition at Romeo review,” April 21, 2016 by Roberta Smith
“Over the past 18 months or so, the Lower East Side has become gallery central for New York City. You can’t throw a cellphone without hitting a gallery, and quite a few are moving targets. Biggish Chelsea galleries are opening outposts here. Freshman dealers are setting up starter spaces, sometimes while still learning the trade at established galleries, and starters have graduated to larger or more accessible places. And as always, artists continue to take the initiative, opening exhibition spaces of their own. A few art dealers have joined forces to make ends meet.” Link

Time Out, “Meet the talents who will be shaping our city,” 20th Anniversary Issue, September 23, 2015, by Matthew Love
“Over the past two decades, Time Out New York has interviewed, profiled, photographed, critiqued, championed and generally gotten nutty with thousands of the creative minds that keep New York, well, creative.” Link

Time Out New York, “Review: Maria Calandra,” June 19, 2015, by Jennifer Coates
“Maria Calandra’s tiny drawings depict artworks in homes and museums as condensed moments full of personality, markers of style and flashes of art-historical greatness. They are like familiar characters you immediately recognize: a Picasso or Carroll Dunham here, a Henry Moore or Mark Rothko there. These miniaturized works are depicted in situ, with all the details of the adjacent furnishings (buttons on couches, wood grain on the floor) left lovingly intact.” Link

New York Sun, “Inside the Artist’s Studio,” May 23, 2013, Xico Greenwald
“John Lees left New York City more than twenty years ago for the seclusion of an update attic studio where the painter found the physical space to make personal artworks from excavated memories. For Maria Calandra, a young Brooklyn-based artist, creative workspace is her subject matter, making intimate “portraits” of artist friends by drawing their studio interiors.” Link

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