Since 2008 Kristie Mayeaux has been a working artist, academic and contemplative. She has foundations in painting with a growing interdisciplinary investigation on the intersections of the Anthropocene and Spirituality. With this work she hopes to provide insight to our interdependence with one another and the natural world, and to deepen her own connection to her interior and exterior worlds.
Kristie holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vermont and her BFA in Painting from The University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She has participated in several of Lafayette’s most exciting public arts events such as Project Rooster Teeth, The Storm Drain Awareness Project, Second Saturday Artwalk and The Hilliard University Art Museum’s Tattooed Walls and she is the former curator of visual arts at Basin Arts. She has recently participated in an Art Spark funded project for the installation of Bob Borel’s Mini Gallery located at Moncus Park.
She currently lives with her family in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Who makes up your art circle?
At the epicenter of my art circle are all of my supportive, affirming and loving friends and family, including a magnitude of amazing artists I’ve come to know and love all along the journey. As Neil Young says some “are scattered, like seeds from an old maple” but it is immensely important to foster those connections. I am also eternally grateful for and indebted to Basin Arts and the community there. I feel so honored to have been involved in nurturing the visual arts programs during my tenure there. Basin Arts is a special place, and has been a hub for myself and artists across all ages, backgrounds and disciplines to conspire together and support one another.
How do you expand your art circle?
This is a give and take construct and is absolutely invaluable. These types of relationships outrank any degree of education. Ideally, by being involved in the plentiful arts programming throughout the region, but also by maintaining relationships with fellow artists over long distances. Networking continues across state lines, across all borders. But in general, by being open to all kinds of conversations. I love to be surprised when a spontaneous conversation generates connection and ideas. Being present this way is the key to moving in any direction, and being an artist to me means to trust that internal compass.
What value do you see in having a creative community?
A creative community is ideally a growth-fostering habitat for a palpitating cultural entity to produce healthy appropriations of current concepts and ideas. It’s the backbone of culture bearers, and integral to the sustenance of creation. Without a creative community there would be no purpose for artists. Like light and dark, one cannot exist without the other.
How does your artistic approach contribute to your community?
I feel my personal work is a radical self-indulgence (not to be confused with 100% pleasant!), and simultaneously an act of rebellion. For my most intimate audience I aim to model a healthy relationship between experiencing/participating in the world and working towards a lifelong body of work that is authentic, exploratory and evolutionary within content and medium. I can’t know what effect my work may or may not have at all for society, as all artwork is an inherently subjective byproduct of intimate processes, but I persist and hopefully not in vain.
