Collier Escapes Reality Through Artistry

“Art is about love and labor.” 

Maya Collier ‘22 lives and breathes art. The aspiring visual artist from Brooklyn, N.Y. studies art history at Marist, but she dreams about the day she will make art her career. 

Maya Collier with one of her art work pieces. Source: Maya Collier, ‘22

“Education goes before art, yet I am so passionate about it. I want to work on it now,” Collier said. Accepting commissions from her fellow-students, Collier personalizes her pieces by interpreting her clients’ inspiration through a creative lens. She refers to art making as an intuitive process. She can find inspiration anywhere, from listening in art history class lectures to her dreams. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer, Collier made art to distract herself from the world’s injustices. Being a Black female in light of racial turmoil was uneasy, so maintaining the humanistic mindset of bringing beauty into life to counter brutality was her escape. This is when she created her Instagram @just.a.mediocre.artist and started using it as a creative outlet to publish her artwork. 

Collier admitted that it is hard to get exposure as she receives the majority of her commissions from Marist students who learned about Collier’s art from their friends on campus. Most of her followers as well as commissions were generated through reposts. When she does get a request for a new art piece, Collier spends about two weeks completing a commission. “It is an art form that takes a long time and considerable amount of work and effort,” she said. 

This passion first started in her childhood. “Growing up in a bad neighborhood, I used art to try to escape reality by finding little moments of joy and happiness in creating art,” Collier said. She was exposed to fine arts from a young age, observing her mother creating extraordinary art pieces and dismantling magazine pages to make collages. 

Collier’s apartment was a fascinating world in the eyes of a little girl. It was her museum full of reproduction paintings and art books. As she grew older, her passion for the arts matured, and she decided to pursue her educational journey at Marist. 

She spent her first year in Florence, living an artist’s dream. “Everything was art. Walking where the masters used to walk gave me purpose,” Collier said. Being immersed in Italian arts and culture outside of the classroom setting led her to pursue art history as her major. In particular, she described her trip to Rome as the most influential experience in the entire program. 

“I was breathing Baroque and Renaissance art. Seeing it all in person proved to me the importance of art history education. My role as a future art historian is to preserve the legacy of those artists,” she said., “I don’t want the artists to be forgotten about.”

Collier always wanted to learn the historical and technical context before seeking her own medium in art. In her studies, she finds inspiration in old and modern masters and often makes her creations inspired by their great masterpieces. “The Dance” (1910) by Henri Matisse influenced her to create “Mother Nature” (2020), a canvas composed of collage motifs and painted elements. 

“Each flower and leaf of the floral arrangement had to be thought out carefully because they were intertwined and overlapping each other as well as I had to study the color theory and make sure each floral and its placement complimented the colors around it and the entire piece,” she said. The subject matter of the piece responds to the current climate of our times: division and inequality. Mother Nature, with her skin tone symbolizing all human ethnicities, race, and skin colors, serves as a reminder that all humans are equal and come from the same mother. 

However, her favorite commission that she created was “Forever Loved” (2020) for her housemate’s friend at Marist. The artwork is dedicated to a deceased loved one. Her customer specifically requested to include a color palette consisting of pink, yellow, blue and green as well as a Chrysanthemum, a flower the client received from her loved one before the passing. The idea for this commission came to Collier when she was asleep, so she quickly sketched out her idea in the middle of the night ending up with an impressive result. 

The radiant piece features a field of flowers and the sky painted in fragments of stained glass. “I wanted to include the element of stained glass because it was to remember someone special in her life. I was very honored to create this piece and it was a task of labor and empathy,” she explained in the piece description.  

After graduation, she plans on visiting the major art museums and collections with her fellow art history classmates. One day, she sees herself earning a Ph.D. in art history and exploring the endless possibilities of her future profession.

“You can do so much with art history: work in museums or galleries, become an art dealer, or paint urban murals,” she said. “All I want is to experience being an art historian.”