Maya Andersson

Maya Andersson is a Swiss artist born in 1942. She trained at the Lausanne school of fine arts. For more than forty years her work has been shown in galleries across France and abroad, and in institutions, most recently the FRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Pau.

She paints in oil on canvas. Formats run from the small study, such as "Sous le chêne" (20 × 26 cm) or "Ombre 3, jardin à Pully" (25 × 20 cm), to the polyptych: "Matin à Forel" brings together two panels of 216 × 162 cm, and "Parc de Fontbonne" three panels of 120 × 60 cm. The canvases are mounted with wooden battens.

For several years now she has painted landscapes, all of them drawn from places she has seen and moments she has lived: Forel and Pully in Switzerland, Bouliac near Bordeaux, the lake of Vassivière, the Czech countryside. The studio itself returns as a motif, in "L’atelier" (2009) and "L’atelier, les poules" (2019).

The artist describes her practice this way: "My work is a necessity; painting is a way of existing, of thinking, of surviving." She adds: "I am not an ‘intellectual’. I am contemplative and active at once. My work is in no way conceptual; it is anchored in lived experience and in feeling, and if it becomes intelligent it is through that solid grounding in life."

Zone Trois Galerie gave her a solo exhibition from 5 September to 26 October 2024, with an opening on 5 September from 6 to 9 pm. Thirteen canvases were shown, dating from 2006 to 2024.

"My work is a necessity; painting is a way of existing, of thinking, of surviving. Everything I do, day to day or less often, bends towards this vital and obsessive practice… It is a little like eating, sleeping… painting…

It could be a work of memory, setting down in paint what has shaped me. Referring, of course, to the history of painting, to the people who taught me and gave me the ‘tools’ to look, to think, to feed myself, but also to all those everyday moments and objects I move among so happily.

I am not an ‘intellectual’. I am contemplative and active at once. My work is in no way conceptual; it is anchored in lived experience and in feeling, and if it becomes intelligent it is through that solid grounding in life. That is where it draws its energy.

For some years now I have been painting landscapes. They are all inspired by places seen and moments lived as landscape. By landscape I mean whatever is worth choosing to paint, according to the emotion felt in that place, at that precise moment. It is a question of sensation."

Maya Andersson