Maxine Price works in oils applied with palette knife and prefers to work in series. For "Terra Firma", Price presents her "New Phase Series." As she says, "It is a new phase I am going through." Working with a palette knife, Price creates a body of work in slightly skewed, abstract designs using thick juicy textures and bright, clear, unglazed colors. She describes these works as having a happy, playful attitude.
Price is a self-described "layerist" using thick, substantial applications of pigment skillfully laid on top of under-layers of color that peep through intentional openings left in the surface. Price prefers to work " wet on wet," i.e. applying thick wet paint over thinner layers of wet paint and still more thick paint on top of that. "It's sort of like putting white icing on a moist chocolate cake" she says laughingly. "You have to have a clear idea of where you want to go and a delicate touch, or you will end up with a lot of pure mud."
"I've always thought I need to know "how" to paint in all mediums--which I can--and for a lot of my career I've been a "realist." However, after a trip to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 1998, I became attracted to the colors of Mexico and the abstract patterns seen in the ancient walls. I started experimenting with oils applied with the palette knife and eventually decided to paint only in palette knife but not to restrict myself as far as subject matter."
Price received her BFA degree in Art from the University of Texas at Austin. She has had a varied background in the arts, spanning forays into fashion illustration, book design, graphic art and portraiture. Many of her portraits hang in the halls of such esteemed institutions as the University of Texas at Austin, St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio and Texas A&M University in College Station. Her creative work is also in collections of IBM, Valero, Marriott Hotels, Red Rock Hotel in Las Vegas and hundreds of other corporate and private collections.
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