Maidy Morhous

"Crab Hunt", Monochromatic Figurative Landscape Etching with Boat

1978

Maidy Morhous is an accomplished printmaker and painter as well as sculptor. Born in New York, she currently creates out of her studio 30 minutes north of San Diego, California. Morhous received her Master of Fine Arts degree while studying at Stanley Hayter’s Atelier 17 in Paris in the mid-1970s. Before returning to the States, she then traveled to Italy to further her studies in casting techniques at the Fonderia Artistica–Marinelli Foundry in Florence. Morhous expresses herself through the medium of bronze, which allows her to portray extremes, from the soft flow of water to the harsh asphalt pavement of our world. Her work encompasses the pop art concept of presenting commonplace objects as fine art. It is meant to engage viewers and to allow them to contemplate and pull from within, to disengage for a moment from the outside world. Morhous continually searches to portray her environment in the world today. Her contemporary still life sculptures pull viewers in while forcing them to question what is being viewed, be it life and one’s existence, the plight of the world, or merely something to bring a smile. Her idiomatic titles prompt metaphorical interpretations and hint at multilayered meanings. Morhous is currently showing in museum exhibitions and galleries across the country, and her work can also be found in public and private collections in Japan, England, Europe, Australia and Canada.