Arts Speak

‘Inside the Box’

By Bryan A. Hollerbach Photos courtesy of Maxine Thirteen

Among the metro area’s younger visual artists, St. Louisan Maxine Long, better known as Maxine Thirteen, enjoys a fairly high profile for her intriguingly stylized neo-representational paintings – a notion reinforced by the exhibition “Inside the Box” on display at the 31art gallery in St. Louis’ North Hampton neighborhood through May.

“Inside the Box” comprised 13 geometrically layered minimalist portraits born of the COVID-19 lockdown two years ago. Like any bona fide artist, she chose to open herself to the experience.

“The series began with my self-portrait ‘25,’” Thirteen relates. “I created it at the beginning of the lockdowns in March of 2020, commemorating my 25th birthday. The style I chose represented my unwillingness to show my full self to those around me, as well as the new inability to show oneself due to the dangers and restrictions that the pandemic presented.

“Suddenly, when the option was taken away, I felt more inclined to want to be seen.”

The paintings in the series suggest something akin to regimented impasto and operate almost as the antithesis of trompe-l’oeil – denying by their very three-dimensionality that painterly technique’s customary illusion of 3D on the picture plane.

“When I first started painting in oils, I practiced and experimented on these tiny, 2- by 2-inch canvases,” Thirteen continues. “Building a larger portrait out of those tiny squares seemed like an interesting way to nod to my beginnings as a painter, while embracing a more substantial and challenging project.

“Expressing the collection by means of boxes seemed apt, given that, especially during the lockdowns early in the pandemic, I felt that I was stuck in a box. As the collection expanded, the conceptual meaning behind the boxes expanded, as well – growing into a sort of metaphor for the various compartments inside of my head.”

The series’ creation, she recalls, proved variously cathartic. “Each piece in the series began with a clear thought, memory or feeling in mind, which I had been ruminating on during the pandemic,” Thirteen says. “Each concept then had to be interpreted through the constraints of the minimalist style, which provided a creative challenge, as well as a more abstract way to express personal feelings.

“There were a lot of things throughout the pandemic that I couldn’t exactly process at the time, but the collection provided a platform for me to explore complex emotions through colors, shapes and glimpses of human expression. This act of translating what was in my head through a specific, creative and hands-on process helped me to make sense of my own thoughts. Each time I finished a piece in the series, I could let go of the particular feeling associated with it and move forward to process the next.” Of the 13 paintings, five have already sold, Thirteen says, adding that “the remaining pieces will likely end up back in my studio following the exhibit. If the right opportunity arises, I do plan to submit them to other local exhibits where they seem relevant… I regularly update my pieces on display at 31art gallery.”

This month, two paintings from “Inside the Box” – including “25” – will appear in the St. Louis Artists’ Guild’s “New Perspectives in Drawing and Painting” exhibition, running from May 20 to June 18.

Maxine Thirteen, maxinethirteen.com

31artgallery, 3520 Hampton Ave., St. Louis, 31artgallery.com