Canadian artist Gabriele Maurus doesn’t live within the lines. She boldly creates her mixed media abstract art from plants, fibers, paper, canvas, acrylics, watercolors, or whatever inspires her.
Each of my works represents a single moment in my life and can not be reproduced.
Gabriele believes that every person is an artist from an early age who knows how to express himself in whatever medium. “Most people decide in the course of their lives for things or professions that are considered serious or those in which one is not patted on the finger because one paints outside the lines,” she says.
When she was three years old, she was given children’s scissors (rounded at the front) because she wanted to cut something, like others in the family. She got her hands on a fabric swatch book and ‘tailored’ about twenty blouses for her doll Karin, just like that, by folding the fabric and working enthusiastically with the scissors. Everything fit, nothing was wasted. The family was amazed!
And now, more than 60 years later, many people are just as astonished because she works with the same enthusiasm and fearlessness on canvases, pieces of wood, fabrics, prints, and with dried plants.
Gabriele’s mixed media abstract art has been featured in galleries and shows all over the world.
A Peek At Gabriele’s Mixed Media Abstract Art
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A new freedom
Gabriele’s work is influenced by Paul Klee, August Macke, and Cy Twombly. But, perhaps, her most-influential mentor was her elementary school teacher.
When she attended 6th grade, Gabriele’s art teacher taught the students how to paint how THEY wanted. This, she says, created freedom she had never known before. “He taught us how to store our personal emotions and energy in the painting so that the viewer could see, feel, and recognize it,” Gabriele recalls.
From the artist: Based on my memories of my Godmother’s kitchen.
The artist’s creative process
“As usual, I work on several works at the same time,” Gabriele says. “An abstract landscape, in acrylic on canvas; a textile collage made from recycled fabrics and fibers; a small sculpture made of felt, lace, crocheted and woolen threads, which I stiffen with a medium and a self-dyed fabric that I will embroider vigorously.”
What would you do if you could not fail?
“A quote that has helped me several times is from Robert H. Schuller,” Gabriele says. It’s a motto she tries to live by: “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”
“There are times in life when you don’t dare to do something because you don’t trust yourself to do it or it seems too risky or because you are simply insecure,” she says. “Then the above sentence helps!”
To see Gabriele’s most recent mixed media abstract art, view her work at Saatchi Art >
What do you think?