Her early works were representational, in the sense that one recognized the subjects. But they were also infused with a spiritual energy that took them beyond "realism."
As the years passed, her work evolved toward greater "simplicity." Fields and habitations were gestured by a few lines and irregular geometrical shapes. Even pigment faded away as she began working with large "canvases" of white and off-white plaster. Without titles, a viewer might not know the subject. For myself, I began to look at the landscape in a new way, seeing what Maria saw. Seeing the feeble human touch on the land that represents the tentative beginnings of cultivation -- and civilization. Not minimalism, but essentialism. Here is a print that I own, called "Inner Boundary."
Maria's works now reside in major collections worldwide.
Where will she go from here? She has begun working on large sheets of polished aluminum, scratching and etching -- a few lines, a patch of stippling. These works are powerful in their tendency toward silence, which is, after all, the only proper response to a powerfully felt presence in nature that in its almost religious intensity overwhelms shape, color, texture, line.
