Hello, I’m Maura Woodward.

After graduating from art school, I started working in New York city  ‘to pay the bills’ (because although, yes, I did see ‘Rent’, I suspected that bills would, in fact, have to be paid at some point), which led to an actual career and all the rest.  I still painted intermittently over the years, in a perfectionist figurative style, but hampered by nagging guilt about not following my dream, a milestone birthday, and my  son's love of fishing as an obsessive hobby, provided the cosmic butt-kick I needed to get back to it. So here I am. 

I had never done purely abstract work before, but I thought it would be a good way to reacquaint myself with the tools without having to really sweat the technique too much.  Of course I ended up sweating it anyway, but finally hit what felt like a groove.  My chosen subject - water - helped me along greatly.  

I grew up fishing with my father, which provided some of my most vivid memories, and when I started accompanying my son on ocean fishing trips it felt like a return to a familiar, near-magical place - tranquil, eternal, but with mysterious and exciting possibilities swimming below the surface.  I’ve also been blessed with close and generous relatives in Bermuda, whose seascapes inspired much of the work here; many of the titles come from places on the island.   

These paintings are ultimately the outcome of many years of tentative work, false starts and decades-long diversions, but for me they feel inevitable, too, and they bring me great joy.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I’ve enjoyed making them.