Meet Genie Maples | Artist, maker of things.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Genie Maples and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Genie, what do you think makes you most happy? Why?
Experience teaches me that being happy is a choice. I lived a long time before I figured that out and made a moment by moment decision to weave threads of happiness through the width and breadth and depth of my other emotions and experiences.

I have challenging biochemistry. I’m prone to depression. I’m neurodivergent. I’ve faced both violence and profound tragedy and I’ve had difficulty recovering from long periods of grief. I wouldn’t trade the life I have for anyone else’s. I couldn’t make the art I do if I hadn’t come to it through some treacherous terrain.

I struggled against myself and against my life for a long time. Most things I learn come through testing them out in the studio first. It’s my laboratory. Making anything is akin to drawing a map. It builds awareness and it leaves signs. The creative process is magic, and I think that’s true whether you’re making art or making soup or making a decision or making a friend or just folding up a receipt into a bit of origami before you throw it in the trash bin for the simple reason that you can. Making things is evidence that we’re change-makers.

Understanding that makes me happy.

One of my favorite paintings is titled, “My Life is a Curious Beast.” I worked on it for about a year through a difficult time. Usually my paintings start in clusters across the canvas that grow outwards to connect with each other, but this painting rolled itself out left to right like a story, like a lesson unfolding.

In order to make that painting I had to reach as far as I could from what and where I was to get a hold of what I wanted to say. I had to become the person who would make the work I want to make.

I have to continually grow space inside me to construct the next thing I want to make. Happiness showed itself in my work before I could recognize it in my life. Art is the map.

Paradoxically, I had to settle some things inside me before I could tell the story built into that painting. It illustrates the passage of time and the process of befriending my own life exactly as it is with all it’s sorrows and ridiculousness and growth and fun and eventual decay. I love every inch of that big painting.

I realized through the year of constructing that beast of a painting that life is exactly as curious about me as I am about it. It’s as heavy or as light as I am within it. Curiosity is an antidote to despair. It renders confusion moot.

The magic of exploring and mapping the landscape of my life makes me happy.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m a self-taught artist and I’ve been doing this work for nearly 25 years. I came to it by noticing tiny whispery impulses and ignoring every thought that asked me why in the world I was following those impulses.

I’m most proud of my current body of work, an ambitious collection of very large elaborate paintings with complicated compositional lines. They beckon and hold attention and lead people who appreciate them through a maze of ambiguous prompts, encouraging a particular kind of soft attention that encourages contemplating memories and internal storytelling. This work is designed to spur the very personal innate sense of wonder viewers bring to it. What people notice over time spent with my work is that the paintings shift with the light, and with changing moods and experiences. They keep noticing new things and thinking different thoughts so my art has an enduring freshness about it.

Building a life and a living through art-making is a challenging road. The way through is so individual it’s only possible to maneuver big swaths of it alone. I’m grateful for and depend on glimpses of other creative people in my peripheral vision making their own way through their process parallel to mine.

For me, and for a lot of artists, one of the biggest challenges is shifting gears from immersive creative process to managing the practicalities of life and career and then back again. It can be disorienting. Continually entering into solitary work and back out into the world where other people live, finding the right collaborators and partners to move a career forward is challenging. For me it’s a repetition of losing the thread and groping around until I find it again in both realms.

It’s not easy, but it is my nature to do creative work and the rest of it is necessary to keep doing it. It’s sort of a miracle that I found this path in the first place because nothing in my life prepared me for it or predicted it. I credit necessity and a primal stubborn openness in my psyche. I had to do this work to live, and I have to live to do the work.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I would take my friend out into the nature that’s so abundant and nourishing in Western North Carolina. We would breakfast on shrimp and grits at Sunny Point Cafe in West Asheville, have lunch at White Duck Taco, take a stroll through Riverside Cemetery, enjoy cocktails at Little Jumbo in Montford, then walk downtown for tapas at Zambra, an oldie but still one of my favorites. The rest of the time we would spend hanging out with good friends, the best part of living here. Oh and I almost forgot sweets – at some point we’d have to swing by The Hop for ice cream and French Broad Chocolate Lounge for, well, chocolate.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Deesha Philyaw for her enduring friendship, her example, and her book The Secret Life of Church Ladies.

Website: https://www.geniemaples.com

Instagram: Instagram.com/geniemaples