MY STORY

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Maria Dryden is an English artist, living in Miami, Florida and Newberry, South Carolina. She produces emotionally charged water-mixable oil paintings and acrylics of energy-laden skies, seas and storms. A keynote of her work is vibrant color and light against darkness. As Maria says: “That’s life. Sometimes it’s bright and light, sometimes it’s dark.”

 

Maria Dryden’s paintings are inspired by her life experience. “As a cystic fibrosis sufferer, I have become obsessed with the power of air. It is our life force but when it runs riot it has a dark, wild side. The rush that sends clouds racing. Every time I look at clouds they have changed shape and color in a matter of seconds. But they can also have a deadly power that feels infinite. I am in awe of storms. They are a true feast for all the senses: the sound of thunder, the feel of cold rain, the smell of the earth after the deluge, the salty taste of sea wind, the sight of lightning. My illness has inspired me to paint the most miraculous images of clouds racing through time.”

 

“For me, it’s a mortal journey. I was a journalist, and I used to sketch images on my reporter’s notepad in court while waiting for guilty or innocent verdicts to print in my newspaper.  I gave up journalism to study art instead. Now I apply paint on canvas to tell stories.”

 

Maria Dryden’s paintings have appeared in British Vogue and the hi-spec interiors magazine, House and Garden. She exhibits and sells art at galleries in England and in Miami at Art Fusion Galleries.