MARIA KREYN

(b.1987) — Lives and works in Brooklyn, NYC

Maria Kreyn studied math and philosophy at the University of Chicago and is self-taught in painting. Her work has been featured in Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, The Art Newspaper, The Financial Times, and many others. Maria’s painting ‘Alone Together’ drives the plot of Shonda Rhimes’ ABC television show The Catch; and her Shakespeare Cycle paintings appear on the award-winning show The Crown. Kreyn’s public works include a collection of 8 monumental paintings based on Shakespeare, commissioned by Andrew Lloyd Webber, now on permanent display in the lobby of London’s historic Theater Royal Drury Lane, open to the public daily.

Reprising art historical conventions of the Baroque and Romantic periods, Maria’s paintings re-mix familiar pictorial tropes and iconographies, communicating through a combination of allegory, masterfully rendered figures, and mysterious scenes of neither specific time nor place. Kreyn’s compositions are not strictly traditional. While deriving their technical foundations from old master works, she reframes these techniques and expands their pictorial vocabulary into a realm of stirring emotional narratives, unique personal histories, and surreal fictions. Her expansive canvases are meditations on nature, the body, and materiality.