This month our Local Love feature is on Chrissy McIntyre, a local Maplewood artist.
Chrissy McIntyre is a collage and mixed media artist we met at the Maplewood Art Walk last month.
Chrissy, who lives here in Maplewood with her husband, has been involved in art for as long as she can remember. About 5-6 years ago, Chrissy was invited to participate in her first art show. At that point in her life she had been focusing primarily on abstract painting, but she had also done a piece that was a random abstract collage that she put in the show. Everyone at the show was drawn to that piece so she knew she had to develop the idea. She created a second piece in the image of her dog, which she then sold. She was subsequently commissioned to do a portrait of a cat. She knew she was onto something good and began developing British-themed pieces such as signs, phone boxes and tube images. She continued developing her collage work and has rendered some beautiful photo realistic pieces.
She is influenced by pop artists such as Chuck Close and Andy Warhol. She doesn’t like anything that is too serious or political, but she does like anything with a bit of humor. “We’re only here for a short time,” she says with a laugh.
Chrissy never knows what the next phase of her work is going to be. She said she is constantly developing and is now moving into more acrylic painting and painting mixed with collage. One of my favorite pieces of Chrissy’s work is “Bakers Passage” which is a mix of watercolor and collage.
You can find some of her work in the SOMA General Store or on Society 6. And she is always willing to do a commission piece.