ATLAS: What drove you to start painting and why? Was art always part of your life, or was it something you discovered much later in life? MAYA: I started drawing and painting before I can remember. My mother later revealed to me that she had hoped I would be an artist even before I was born; so when I declared to my family that I was going to be an artist, it was received as a matter of course, and neither me nor them have ever questioned it. So, I had been lucky that I had this identity of an ‘artist’ established so early on, and I never had to struggle with decisions about my future. I have been interested in many other fields, especially science and music, but never with any intention of pursuing them professionally. ATLAS: Was anyone in your family an artist? MAYA: No. Both of my parents, as well as almost everyone else in my family are in science. My father had some drawing talent when he was young and an eye of an architect... logical, precise, correct. He was interested in analyzing direction, perspective, composition, anatomy, weight, relation of objects to each other and to empty space. My mother’s approach to art is more intuitive. She has an innate ability to allow herself to be absorbed and awed by beauty as well as emotional meaning behind it without the need to judge it rationally for its subject. She told me that, when she was a child she knew a boy who would not go out and play with the other children but he would sit on his windowsill and draw for hours on end. She thought it must be a great fortune to love an activity so much that it absorbs you so completely, that time, place and people cannot touch you when you are in that world which belongs to you alone. So she wished for her child to have that. I have learned a great deal from both of my parents.
Atlas Magazine | Winter 2012
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