Check out Maynard Breese’s Artwork

Today we’d like to introduce you to Maynard Breese.

Maynard, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I started my career as an artist/fine art printer part-time back in 2007. I was working at a brokerage firm, not feeling it, and started an online business turning people’s photos into digital oil paintings, and then having them printed on canvas. I was having the canvas done by another company and had to learn how to stretch wrap it and seal it.

I branched into selling some of my own personal work at the Chandler Art walk, moving onto First Friday’s in Phoenix and Las Vegas, and then to the Tempe Festival of the arts, the North Park Festival of the Arts in San Diego (where I was the featured artist in 2014), along with dozens of other larger shows throughout the Southwest.

Around 2010, I decided to purchase my own wide format fine art printer, and, through word of mouth, I have become one of the go to people in the region for quality prints on canvas and fine art paper, at very affordable prices (because I am an artist, and I understand the challenges artists face).

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I describe my work as “realistic surrealism”. It’s the world, twisted just a bit. I am a digital artist, and I combine layers of photographs with digital painting techniques to create pieces that look just like oil paintings. I love the idea of digital art, but I also didn’t want it to look like CGI or Anime, which is where a lot of it seems to go. I still want that feel of a painting.

My work is meant to elicit an emotional response, I don’t try to send a strong political message (with most pieces) and tends to be very musically influenced. I will catch a lyric in a song, and it will almost flash an image in my head, and then I will listen to that song over and over again and let the image fully form, and then paint it from there and HOPE it comes out as great as what I am seeing. Not all of them do, haha.

I want people to feel. I don’t try to dictate, or hope for what they will feel, when they see my work. I have had people, one right after the other, in which the first person saw an uplifting piece, and another person saw the same work and saw something sombre. And they are both correct.

How can artists connect with other artists?
Oh, I’ve got advice…though it may cost me so friends! haha.

If you are an artist, and you are successful at it, great for you. But get over yourself, because we can become unpopular just as quickly. Help those who ask for help. Give good advice, point them towards good shows and places to hang their work. You are not creating your own competition.

DON’T think you have to join a guild or a group or whatever and subject yourself to the “show us your work and we will offer a critique of it” session just to be around other artists. How can anyone critique your work when they don’t know what image you had in your mind and what you are trying to create? Criticism is rarely constructive, and if you are already feeling lonely and, on the outside, getting your work ripped by others isn’t going to help. (and this is where all the hate mail response will come from. And I don’t care. None of the really successful artists I print for, nor myself, open ourselves up for that kind of negative feedback willingly. There are enough people in the world who are going to try to tear you down, don’t set yourself up for more of it.

Go show your work in the local art walks and get to know the people in the booths next to you and around you. Those are your brothers and sisters in the struggle. You all sharing an experience, and you all have skin in the game.

Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I am trying very hard to show at each first Friday here in Phoenix, on 2nd and Roosevelt at Revolver records, in order to keep my local roots.

If they select me this year, I am hoping to show at the Tempe Festival of Arts this fall. Not sure about any CA shows this year. I really am trying to focus on larger shows this year and next, and I have been so busy printing work for other artists that I just don’t have the time for out of town shows.

My online gallery where work is available for purchase is at www.zhibit.org/yourmemoriesoncanvas
And, as a matter of fact, there is a HUGE 50% sale I am running there right now, until the middle of August!

I am on Facebook as https://www.facebook.com/maynard.breese.artist/

And, artists looking for printing can find my page at https://www.facebook.com/maynardbreeseprinting/
or they can email me at maynardorder@gmail.com

Contact Info:

• Website: www.zhibit.org/yourmemoriesoncanvas
• Email: maynardorder@gmail.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maynard.breese.artist/
• Other: https://www.facebook.com/maynardbreeseprinting/

Image Credit:
All work by Maynard Breese, Artist.

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