Maya Andersson

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

“My work is a necessity; painting is a way of existing, of thinking, of surviving. All my activities, daily or less so, lead towards this vital, obsessive practice. It is a bit 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 with pleasure.

I am not an intellectual. I am an active contemplative. My work is in no way conceptual; it is anchored in lived experience and in affect, 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 landscapes. 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

An exhibition supported by Château Desmirail.