Artist Maria Mijares with Twilight Boats and Dark Night Boats Installation

I am a contemporary realist painter working in Florida, known
 for conceptually ‘lived-out ‘ stories relayed in ‘psychedelic precision’ and public art. My work as a contemporary realist began with an unconscious intent to understand and hold onto personal experience. Born in NYC, I grew up back and forth between urban New Jersey and my ancestral Santander, Spain. Comfortably lost everywhere, I developed a heightened visual awareness where language may have failed me. Compelled to narrate, I paint a world I can live in. As a precisionist focused on an urban industrial world and simultaneously on my European experience, I could reconcile two very different cultures in paint. Felix Angel, in the catalog for the Coors National Exhibition, wrote, “…this granddaughter of Spanish immigrants paints with a desire to grasp reality in detail, as if this is the best way to define and become a part of it." I was awarded fellowships from Puffin Foundation, Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Inc. and two from New Jersey State Council on the Arts. My 4 large-scale porcelain enamel on steel murals, “Between Manhattan and Meadowlands” are installed at Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Transit System’s Bergenline Avenue Station in Union City, NJ. I will create a public art installation for NJ Transit Market Street Bus Station’s (Paterson) 2019-2020. I am currently preparing "DINERS—Then & Now" in porcelain enamel for the city of Worcester, MA wayfinder project. My work is in the collections of Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de Santander, Spain, Newark Museum, Montclair Museum, Jersey City Museum, Morris Museum, Noyes Museum, Zimmerli Museum, NJ State Museum, the estate of John Cardinal O’Connor, New Brunswick City Hall. I have lectured at museums, schools, hospitals, and caregiver support groups, and was an E.B. Osborn Fellow at the Purnell School, Gladstone, NJ in 2015. I am featured in two books—a textbook “Fearless Creating” (Dr. Eric Maisel, 1995, G.P. Putnam’s Sons and “Artists Observed” Harvey Stein, 1986, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., NYC.