Delaware.gov logo

Search For Artists







Keywords: 

Search by Artist Index




Visual
Visual



Facebook YouTube Etsy Share

About the Artist

Maia Palmer is an artist and art teacher who has lived and worked around the globe. Palmer earned a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She has exhibited nationally as well as internationally in Spain, Germany, and China. She works primarily in charcoal and acrylics, and has also created community murals, digital works and figurative sculptures. 

Palmer has taught art at Full Sail University, Wilmington University, Flint Hill School, Archmere Academy, and is currently the high school Visual Arts teacher at Cab Calloway School of the Arts. She is also co-curator of the Cab Calloway School of the Arts Gallery and the exhibition coordinator at the Music School of Delaware. She is interested in helping artists create connections within the community and in celebrating diversity and collaboration.

Much of her work is inspired by her experiences teaching English as a Second Language. As an ESL teacher, she was privy to a host of challenging and highly personal stories of immigration. The experience altered her world view, and created a desire to use her art as a means to convey the complex yet fragile stories of others.

Consider conversation as a medium, analogous to paint for the painter, or clay for the sculptor; the act of dialogue becomes an aesthetic act of collaborative creation. She uses the language of art as a means of initiating communication; her subject becomes her partner in conversation. As we build verbal connections, our capacity for understanding ourselves and others expands in tandem with the flow of conversation.

Palmer uses portraiture as a vehicle for storytelling, merging real people with imagery and text laden with historical and personal value. This use of pattern and iconography creates a sense of spatial ambiguity, encouraging viewers to decode the images according to their own associations and experiences. She creates visual narratives of friends who are actively challenging societal norms and creating the change they wish to see in the world. Over the past few years, she has felt helpless as she watches a narrative of hate, racism and fear of the “other” unfold in our country. By investigating these territories through portraiture and the sharing of stories, Palmer creates opportunities to build relationships, and to increase our capacity to recognize and celebrate our shared humanity.



Maia Palmer
Painting / Drawing
3 Rector Court
Apt C
Wilmington, DE 19810
QR Code
Information
Arts Services: Exhibits, Lectures / Public Speaking, Master Classes, Public Art, Social Functions, Workshops
Audience Served: 6th to 8th Grade, 9th to 12th Grade, Adult
Availability: Delaware (all 3 counties), Year-round
Video






Artist Roster Logo


+