MAYA BEASON

Maya creates expressionist figure paintings in ink, a practice that based as much in process and form as in subject. 

She works on raw canvas, first saturated with water - preferably in the sea or a river, giving the work a firm sense of time and place. As the ink is applied to the wet fabric, it both disperses and changes colour and depth. The extent of these transformations is mediated by the moisture levels in the canvas: by allowing it to dry to a certain point, and then re-saturating areas by hand, Maya is able to direct the behaviour of the ink and coax it into her composition. 

The process has, therefore, become a kind of meditative mediation between Maya’s materials, approached with some idea of the subject and the degree of figuration intended, but mostly emerging intuitively. Her works all occupy the same grey space between abstraction and figuration: their subjects, drawn from natural rhythms, the body, and landscapes, weave in and out of her works with varying degrees of clarity. 

Maya graduated in 2025 from the BA Fine Art (Painting) programme at Camberwell College of Arts. She works from her studio in deepest Cornwall, and will be exhibited in November 2025 at her Crème Fraîche salon.