Maria Kreyn

Maria Kreyn is a visual artist, educated at the University of Chicago (in Maths and Philosophy), and is a self-taught painter. Her works have been exhibited in numerous galleries in the United States and Europe, and have traveled to multiple museums in China. Maria’s work has been featured in Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, The Art Newspaper, The Financial Times, and many others. Maria’s painting ‘Alone Together’ features in and drives the plot of Shonda Rhimes’ ABC television show The Catch. Her public works feature a collection of 8 monumental paintings based on Shakespeare, commissioned by Andrew Lloyd Webber, now on permanent display in the lobby of London’s historic Theater Royal Drury Lane, open to the public daily. 
 
Reprising art historical conventions of the Baroque and Romantic periods, Maria’s paintings can be best described as a re-mix of familiar pictorial tropes and iconographies that communicate through a combination of allegory, masterfully rendered figures, and mysterious scenes which are neither of a specific time nor place. Kreyn’s compositions are not strictly traditional. While deriving their technical foundations from old master works, she reframes these techniques and expands their pictorial vocabulary into a realm of stirring emotional narratives, unique personal histories, and surreal fictions. From a predominantly female, even androgynous, perspective, Kreyn tells a story of human intimacy and ceremony, investigating the liminal state of connection and detachment.