art - bio

Contact Maria if you are interested in commissioning a work or having her exhibit in your gallery.

Maria Ingold specializes in watercolour and oils of landscapes or people or abstractions of life, as in her recent Portals series. This series is composed of 9 sculptural paintings. Each picture represents looking through something close up into the space beyond. She specially made the 15-inch square and 4 inch deep canvas to lend the paintings a sculptural quality as she paints the dimensions around the edges. This series was inspired by her painting Skylight of a skylight in a pub toilet in Glastonbury. Abstracted, it is has a beautiful dark sun quality. She has taken on several commission pieces and exhibited in the USA.

She has been an artist since the age of 2 when she remembers drawing her first face on a portable chalkboard she had as a child. This moment stands out clearly in her mind, as she didn't understand why her family took it away from her and photographed it, not knowing until later that they realised at an early age she had a keen awareness of the world around her and how to represent it visually. She consistently stood out as one of the top artists throughout her school career and studied privately with Pat Beatty, her home town's top watercolourist.

Maria went on to study both Fine Arts and Computer Science at the University in New Mexico but found time to mix in her passion for history and different cultural experiences through an exchange course to England. She had the pleasurable opportunity of being exposed to a great deal of European art she would otherwise not have seen in New Mexico. It was during this time in the UK that Maria got the travel bug that would eventually see her and her cat move to the UK, where she has lived for the past 11 years. Maria loves the history, culture and sense of humour here but says she does long for the hot dry New Mexico summers.

Demonstrating the many strings to her bow, Maria has also worked for 17 years in the creative use of technology. She is also currently writing a graphic novel, based on ideas inspired by dreams, living in Highgate and travelling. In addition to this, she is a film, TV and interactive judge for BAFTA, which she finds incredibly rewarding.