Maia Leisz & Charles Phillips

By the age of eight or so, I came to grips with the fact that my hair would never grow long enough for me to become a mermaid; somehow the fishtail and non-proximity to the sea never posed a problem! I decided at that point that the next best thing was to be an artist and have pursued that goal ever since.Growing up in Northwestern Montana without television or electricity left much room for creativity. I read extensively and learned to work with my hands. While in high school I had the opportunity to paint several murals, and shortly thereafter painted some in a private home in England.I attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, majoring in Art and minoring in French. I was accepted to an intensive language program in the south of France, and while there was offered a full scholarship to the Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing in Aix-en-Provence.Upon returning to the states I began doing art shows and have been fully supporting myself as an artist ever since. I have lived in such varied places as the San Francisco Bay Area, the South of France and Northern Italy. While I currently live in Idaho, I travel extensively, and draw much of our inspiration from this.I believe that Art is much like a language; the more that you speak it, the better you become at expressing yourself through it. I paint or draw daily, often using watercolors to “sketch” a scene that I will later do in oils. All of my work is original. I do no reproductions as I feel that painting regularly both makes me a better artist and makes it possible to offer affordable original art to my collectors.A large part of my current work is done in collaboration with my husband, Charles Phillips. He is a professional wilderness photographer who studied with Ansel Adams. His stunning photographic compositions easily translate into oils. His photographs document our travels together and provide an abundance of compositional material.I currently work in oils on canvas. I use a limited palette, mixing my colors from the primaries to obtain a harmonious color scheme. I find so much beauty and inspiration in the world around me that I let my colors and technique be the unifying traits in my body of work, allowing for diversity of subject matter.