Baker Artist Portfolios

Name: Jonathan Maxwell
Born: Baltimore MD 1969
I graduated from MICA in 1991 with a BFA in General Fine Arts. A few years after graduating, I started designing and making furniture,in addition to making mixed media paintings. The furniture work grew and demanded most of my time making new designs and completing commissions. I have been able to make a living designing and building furniture, but I have always reserved a section of my shop for a painting studio. This is where I feel the most creative and I love taking the skills I have developed from making furniture and applying them more expressively in my assemblage/ mixed media paintings. Currently, I live and work in Baltimore with my wife and son.

Artist Statement 2024

My work is a meditation on the contrast between the world outside ourselves and the world within ourselves. I am interested in the landscape and the still life, the seen and the unseen. I am interested in the evocative nature of memories, not so much to create or recreate any specific narrative, but instead, my aim is to elicit a feeling or emotion through a poetic use of images and objects.

 In order to achieve this result, I incorporate a mixed media approach, using materials such as paint, photography, collage, etc... on panels or structures of either metal or MDF. I find the specific and precise nature of photography and the expressive capacity of paint, used in combination with sculptural objects; provide a compelling vehicle to investigate the elusive qualities of memory and perception.

Jonathan Maxwell