“In all my work I attempt to go beyond boundaries and limitations—my own and those imposed by convention.”
-Cynthia Maurice
After six decades of professional practice, Cynthia Maurice held a major career retrospective in 2023 at Galatea Fine Art in Boston. The exhibit showcased paintings, drawings, lithographs, and mixed media works, all created through direct observation. Sketches from her sketchbooks were displayed alongside finished pieces, offering insight into her artistic process—a lifelong journey of exploration and discovery through drawing.
“I have always kept a sketchbook by my side—it’s invaluable to my process. Like a diary, it’s deeply personal and not meant to be shared. In it, I feel free to experiment with unexpected colors and scribbles, abandoning rules and embracing creative spontaneity. This freedom often leads to surprising visual discoveries that evolve into finished work.” Maurice’s focus on observation began during her student years when she studied the interplay of light and shadow on skeletal structures. This foundational practice later informed her landscape paintings, leading her to the Southwest Rockies, where she explored the raw, eroded terrain shaped by wind and water over time. Her artistic curiosity expanded from nature to overlooked everyday objects, exploring themes of transition, metamorphosis, rebirth, and growth. In her drawings of buds and vegetables, these so-called “mundane” subjects take on new life, re-imagined through bold, expressive mark-making that captures their quiet existence in light and space. Born and educated in Boston and New York City, Cynthia received a three-year scholarship in high school to study at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She continued her education at Pratt Institute and Boston University, where she earned her BFA and MFA under the guidance of Walter Murch and David Aronson. She later obtained an MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, launching a successful illustration career with work published in The New York Times, The National Law Journal, The Boston Globe, Tikkun Magazine, and Boston University’s Bostonia Magazine. Maurice has maintained an active exhibition schedule, with major solo shows at the Danforth Museum at Framingham State University and the Freedman Gallery at Albright College in Reading, PA. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums and acquired by corporate collections. In 2002, she received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship Award in Drawing (Printmaking), among other honors. |