Jon Beinart - "How would you describe your passion for painting?"

Maura Holden - "I'd describe it as a loving bigamous marriage to a dominatrix who pays me."

Jon - "Haha. And who is this dominatrix and what is her vested interest in your creative output?"

Maura - "Painting is the indifferent air through which my arrow flies, and my favorite mode of communication."

Jon - "So what do you feel you have communicated through your art? Is your visual voice conscious or do messages reveal themselves as a painting or drawing unfolds?"

Maura - "I hope I've communicated some of the beauty and intensity of the inner hallucinatory worlds… I've always been fascinated by dreams, particularly the mythic/cosmic type. They inspire awe and a feeling of profound awareness or meaning beyond words.

I'm conscious of meaning before I paint an image, but while I paint, my mind often entertains me with parades of alternative meanings. The fascinating thing about parables and pictures is that they're hard to nail down definitively."

Jon - "The way you balance your odd-shaped over-populated compositions is beyond me (a great example of this is Thanatos Wave). I assume that you take quite a long time on each piece. Do you draw preliminary sketches before taking on one of your major works? How much of your process is playful and spontaneous?"

Maura - "Yes to preliminary sketches — I have suitcases full of them! And yes, it takes years to complete the more complicated paintings… Once I've drawn the main figures, I suddenly "see" other figures or structures around them. I click into the playful visionary mode. This is my favorite part of the painting process. It feels like being a magical child — or, if things take a bad turn, the sorcerer's apprentice."

Jon - "What role have psychedelics played in your work Maura. I assume that you're not under the influence when painting your detailed images, but I recall reading that you have experimented with psychedelics."

Maura - "Psychedelics are very important to me. I'll go so far as to call them my sacraments. To me, they are absolutely sacred allies… Mind you, I don't recommend psychedelics to others. People have different experiential capacities. Some people can be psychically injured, or swept into harmful delusions, or they may just never break through into the profound… That said, I'll maintain that under their influence I have traveled through the most sublime and terrifying realms, and beyond all realms — into the Great Unity. The images for all of my major pictures have come to me under the influence of psychedelics. I've done lots of drawing  — those preliminary sketches, as well as highly polished drawings — under their influence. Painting is another matter. My methods of painting are exponentially more complex than drawing. While tripping I need a fast, direct vehicle in which to chase the moving hallucinations."

Jon - "I understand you are a very spiritual person Maura. Can you please describe your spiritual beliefs and how they relate to your art."

Maura - "To be honest, Jon, I don't actually have any spiritual beliefs… I think of beliefs as convictions about things that one has never directly perceived. For me this is, at best, a guessing game.

I have lots of "spiritual" experiences, though — if apocalyptic and heavenly visions; states of blissful beatitude; universal love and compassion; and the acute perception that creation is one, world without end… qualify as such. I've been tempted to draw conclusions and form beliefs from these experiences — the human mind naturally jumps to conclusions — but my path doesn't involve creating a system of beliefs (a religion). If I have any attitude towards the formulation of beliefs and religions, it is that I personally prefer to avoid all forms of religious crystallization.

In my art I'm recording parts of my journeys in the non-material worlds. Between 1999 and 2004 I made pictures of apocalyptic/transcendent realms. More recently I've begun a transformational heaven/garden/love phase, with passages suggesting that wonderful experience, the acute perception that creation is all one, world without end."

Jon - "Thank you Maura. Very beautifully put! Is creative writing also an important outlet for you as an artist? I have always enjoyed your writing style and I'm curious to hear of any plans you have as a writer."

Maura - "Thanks, Jon… Writing is a wonderful, difficult medium… I love to read well-written prose … But my stage of development as a writer is about equal to what my stage of development as a painter was at age 20 (I'm 40 now). I don't feel that I've mastered words in any way — all great art takes long-term dedication — though I do fantasize… I most enjoy writing in the short story form, partly because poetry and novel writing seem too advanced for me, but also because it's a good form for expressing dynamics rather than character… I recently wrote a short story for the Spring 2007 issue of The Visionary Revue. It should be out soon. I have no concrete plans for future stories, but when I'm less busy I'd like to try another."

Jon - "Does humor play an important roll in your art? I remember a drawing of a toilet with teeth that you sent me on a CD once and I am always drawn to the tiny business man with a top hat taking a piss over the edge of a building in my print of 'Thanatos Wave'. (I know my examples were linked to my own preoccupation with toilet humor, but I have found many characters and events in your images quite funny)."

Maura - "When the can bites,

When the pee springs,

When I'm feeling sad,

I simply remember the humor of things

And then I don't feel so bad.

I'd say that today my pictures are less humorous than they were seven or more years ago, though I don't necessarily consider this trend continuous. "Black humor", which is really a way of providing comic relief to the downtrodden, has always felt natural to me. I'm fairly sure that I can credit my wonderful family and the glories of life on the underbelly of Philadelphia with teaching me this mode of entertainment.

But my circumstances in recent years have been so wholesome… The goofiness of humanity and my own brain may be my only remaining comic resources."

Jon - "Well regardless of your new 'wholesome' life I still detect a hint of Black humor in your work and I love it ;) Thank you so much for your time Maura. Do you have any exciting news for our readers? Any upcoming exhibitions or publications?"

Maura - "The Visionary Revue, Spring 2007, and of course Metamorphosis. I'm preparing to launch some prints through Nemo's Utopia, and I'm working with Delvin on a new card for the Oracle Complex — Galactik Trading Cards. Otherwise, I just want to finish some very elaborate paintings that I've been working on for years.

Thanks for everything, Jon. As always, it's been a great pleasure sitting at the keyboard with you."

Maura Holden is also one of 50 Artists published in Metamorphosis

and wrote the essay: Tsunami. 

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