We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Maiya Lonesome. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Maiya below.

Maiya, appreciate you joining us today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

I think being a creative has been a part of me since I was a kid. I can recall always approaching school work, learning, problem solving from the perspective of pictures. When I was learning math most specifically algebra or geometry I would always visualize problemm solving from the perspective of the numbers moving around the equation. Or visually approach a word problem by imagining from a birds eye view “two trains leaving stations heading the same direction” and visually mapping out when they would cross paths. I have always considered myself a visual learner. When it came to creating whether it is on a plate as a pastry chef or on a canvas an artist, I always approach my work from a visual acumen. The think that I love the most about being an artist is the freedom to decide when “a piece is done”. Being an artist means having full autonomy over your work and your say so in deciding, “ok, this fully encompasses the feeling I was trying to invoke.” I think I chase that autonomy in piece of art that I create. Which can at times be a double edge sword because pieces can take longer than the timeframe I may arbitrarily impose but also very fulfilling once I know I’ve come to the end of a piece and it’s signed and framed. My professional career is anything but conventional there are times where I have wondered if it would have been “easier” to have a desk job that is more public facing. But I know that I wouldn’t be fulfilled in my career if I wasn’t doing something that involves creativity. I’ve never looked at my career as solely something to financially support myself rather I’ve always made decisions about my career in terms of creative interest and overall sense of fulfillment. There have been several times in my working life where I’ve wondered if this approach was the “wise” approach. Nothing highlighted this thinking more than the pandemic. Being someone who works full time in the restaurant industry, when the world shut down, I was furloughed from my full time job for 15 months. Not only was I grappling with whether it was wise for me to go back into the hospitality industry once life resumed to normal but also how would this amount of time affect the salary compensation for someone in my career field. Fortunately, the time that I spent at home was time that I redirected my creative energy away from “drawing on a plate with desserts” to full time creating, sculpting, drawing, molding on canvas and other 3D surfaces.

Maiya, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

When I was a kid, I was really bored with school. I only had 2 subjects that piqued my interest math and science. That was until 8th home economics, we walked into a kitchen lab and I was immediately hooked on cooking and baking. Quickly realizing that culinary combines both science and math, I knew immediately that I wanted to be chef. Everything fell into place in the 8th grade kitchen classroom. I graduated high school and directly enrolled in culinary school. I loved it then and 20 plus years later I still love what I do professionally. Back in 2016, I began to have severe symptoms flares from lupus which almost completely derailed my career. Many days I would go to work in the pastry kitchen; swollen and struggling to walk, experiencing profound muscle weakness in my hands that made it difficult to hold a pen let alone a spatula or a knife and experiencing such debilitating fatigue that I would fall asleep standing still or even walking. As a means to combat the excess chronic pain that I was experiencing from the lupus flare, I began drawing again. What I quickly discovered when I was mentally focusing on the art that I was creating, I couldn’t feel the widespread chronic nerve and joint pain. In a way, art became my pain reliever. I didn’t start making art to turn into a business, it wasn’t until 1 of my friends saw a piece on my social media and asked if they could purchase it that I realized, there was potential to have a second source of income. My business started as art on canvas but as time went on and I started to absorb more creative inspiration from other artists, my art became, art on tiles, and then on bags, apparel, textiles, mirrors, glassware, jewelry. The deeper I delved into the art world, the more I wanted to see what else I could do. The thing I’m most proud of is not allowing my physical struggles with lupus dictate my potential to be a successful creative.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn that permission to exist is not required. When we are school age and learning not only educationally but also how to exist in society. We are often taught to “raise our hands when we want to speak”, obviously this is required for structure inside of a classroom. Once we are adults and we are out in the world, what I’ve discovered at times is people are still subconsciously asking for permission to speak. Even outside of a structured educational setting, people will “mute” themselves in order to “be professional”, “keep the peace”, “fear to step forward”…The most beautiful part of being an artist in any sense of the word, is being able to remove that barrier that mutes your voice. Artists don’t ask for permission to exist or to create, they just do. They have a sense of a feeling or desire to amplify an injustice or express their own fulness to an audience and they take that and they run with it. As a creative, I had to learn how to express myself on canvas or through my art without fear of trepidation as to how my voice would be perceived. When I started focusing my artwork away from abstracts and towards portraits, I found that I was drawn to highlighting women of color in my work. Even some pieces that started off in my mind as a male portrait began to lean feminine the further I got into the piece and rather than fight against that, I learned to lean into it. Some of my favorite pieces, started off with the idea of being male but ultimately became female portraits. So I suppose another thing I had to unlearn was controlling what my soul was trying to say via my artwork. Giving my soul permission to speak however it needed to speak without my own self imposed barriers.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I think amplification is probably the biggest thing that drives my creative journey. I was the teen that always wanted to go to museums as my birthday outing with my mom. While I have and still appreciate all types of art, I struggled to understand the lack of representation of women of color in the mainstream museums. Over the past few decades, there has certainly been a shift towards representation for (BIPOC) women of color artist and artwork. There was a time where artwork depicting people of color, their history, their voices through creative outlets was relegated to a small section of a museum. Part of my creative journey has been to add some pieces where I’ve felt that gap when I was a child then young adult then an adult who has always been drawn to the art world. There’s nothing I seek more than to have my nieces and nephews look at my work and see themselves and know that they are worthy of being represented.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mellingtonart.com
• Instagram: m_ellington_art
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/m.ellington.art
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maiya-m-lonesome-mat-99554128/