Maya Simone Ankenbruck, Sketch Artist, Oil Painter, Ceramicist, Silk Screen Printer, South Haven, Michigan
Email: maya.ankenbruck@gmail.com
Artist Bio:
I have been an Artist ever since I can remember. I am now 20 years of age and creating art or being involved in the Arts is the only thing I can imagine doing with my life. I Attended Southwestern Michigan College from 2018-2020 and received an Associates in Visual Arts with Honors. I have interned at the South Haven Center for the Arts in the Past and am very glad to have the opportunity to work with Kerry again, and now Noelle, with this 2020, Summer Internship. I am pursuing a career in entrepreneurship, selling my art, doing commissions, making various product items and building a name for myself through social media. I am planning to finish two more years of art school before I jump into my real adult career, but am working my way slowly to a website. Other than being a Freelance Artist, I am very interested in becoming a Tattoo Artist. I very much appreciate well done and unique body art. I love Art, Nature, Insects, and Turtles, specifically my Box Turtle Mabel.
Artist Statement:
I would always be drawing in class and when I look back on the sketches they are not bad. My peers enjoyed what I would create, even if it was a bit odd, so people enjoying my art really made me think about pursuing it as a job. I am always unsure if people will enjoy my art enough to spend actual money on it. But as I have grown and gone to college and met interesting people and discovered other artists I have realized that dark, symbolical, maybe confusing art has been made forever and has sold and has been revered as great. Surrealist art is my love. I love everything about surreal art, it makes me think, it makes me feel something, and I could look at and talk about surreal paintings for hours. I want to create art that makes other people feel that way. I am perhaps a dark person. I love the color black, my art is mainly not joyful, but I cannot say it is sad to me either. It is just what I felt like creating that day. I enjoy oil paint because it is old school, it dries slowly so I can continuously go back to it, the Impasto technique is so captivating, oil paint is the best paint in my mind. While at Southwestern College I took ceramics and fell in love with that as well. I love to make coil pots and add details such as body parts or interesting floral shapes. I very much enjoy glazes that look like nature and seeing a ceramic piece come out of the kiln finished, and not cracked is amazingly exciting. As for drawing, I draw many nudes, portraits, surreal people, surreal objects. I love the human form and have taken nude study classes. People are not superior to turtles or any other life form to me, but I definitely love to draw people the most. I have also just started my long learning process of silk screen printing. It's very interesting and worth my time. Creating my own shirts with my designs will be a large part of my entrepreneurial business and website.
My favorite tool is my lovely hands. I have to restrain myself from smearing the paint on my canvases with my fingers, like a child. It is just so satisfying to work directly with my hands. Maybe that is why I took a quick liking to ceramics, getting to be hands on with my material, and really sculpt and feel the art between my hands.
Maya Simone Ankenbruck is the South Haven Center for the Arts' Intern for the summer 2020 season. This opportunity was made available by a grant from The Greater South Haven Area Community Foundation.