This series of paintings titled Always Already Again investigates concepts of landscape from multiple, shifting vantage points. In these works, “Landscape” is a process; it is comprised of ever-shifting forces of geology, biology, deep time, memory, history and myth. Like the landscapes we occupy, these works are not static but are containers for this multiplicity of overlapping perspectives and understandings.

Stretching across painted surfaces like towers, puzzles, maps, rivers or spines, my compositions play with notions of chaos and order, balance and imbalance in an effort to hold multiple realities at once. These works rest in tension and seek to create language for the environmental uncertainty and precariousness we face, without crumbling beneath the weight of the understanding.

In addition, I create paintings that emphasize the physicality of embodied experience. In response to our cultural obsession with the digital, the textural and sculptural nature of these works emphasize the haptic and the sense of touch. Despite our efforts to live through our screens, we can’t escape our bodies and the sensual, textural world in which we live. While many of us exist in disconnection from embodied experience, it is our visceral relationship to the world we inhabit and our sense of touch that helps us locate our bodies in space and, I argue, contributes to a deeper relationship to the places where we live.

By developing paint surfaces that are thick and dense with slabs, ridges and peaks these works provide a place for the body to experience its own materiality and invite a deeper connection to the physical world around us.

(Maya Kabat)

Maya Kabat’s abstract oil paintings investigate concepts of landscape from multiple, shifting vantage points. In these works, “Landscape” is a process; it is comprised of ever-shifting forces of geology, biology, deep time, memory, history, myth and human interaction. Like the landscapes we shape and occupy, these works are not static but are containers for a multiplicity of overlapping perspectives and understandings. Stretching across the canvas like towers, maps, rivers or spines, these paintings play with notions of chaos and order, balance and imbalance in an e"ort to hold multiple realities at once. These works rest in tension and seek to create a language for uncertainty and precariousness without crumbling beneath the weight.

Maya Kabat uses a range of scraping tools used for building interior walls to create surfaces with stripes, gouges and flat slabs of paint. “As I apply, scrape away, and reapply paint as the paintings evolve. Earlier layers are exposed and then covered, as the painting is built up, cut away and edited.” Kabat continues, “I see the process of painting itself as an evolution and excavation. I dig through the layers to expose the truth of the painting. I paint to create a language for things I can’t articulate, to address the questions that don’t have answers”. Kabat creates paintings that emphasize the physicality of embodied experience. In response to our cultural obsession with the digital, the textural, and sculptural nature of these works celebrate and emphasize the haptic, and the sense of touch. In her words, “Despite all our e"orts to live through our screens, we can’t escape the three-dimensionality of our organic bodies and the sensual, textural world in which we live. While many of us exist in disconnection from embodied experience, it is our visceral, reciprocal relationship to the land we inhabit and the sense of touch that helps locate us in space. By focusing on surfaces that are thick and dense with slabs, ridges and peaks these works provide a place for the body to experience its own materiality.”

Maya Kabat received an MFA from the University of California, Davis, in 2000. She was a founding member of Mercury Twenty Gallery, in Oakland, CA, and served as president on the Oakland Art Murmur Board of Directors in 2011-2012. In August 2016, she attended The London Intensive, a residency sponsored by the Camden Arts Centre in London, England. In 2018 she attended the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation Artist Residency in New Berlin, New York. In 2022 she attended the Gambrell Gallery Artist Residency in Ashland, Oregon. Notable public commissions and collections include Cisco Systems, Palo Alto, CA, Stanford Hospitals, Palo Alto, CA and the Neiman Marcus Collection across the United States. In 2018 she completed a large commission for the Kaiser Center in Oakland, California that was permanently installed in the main lobby. In 2021 she completed another large commission for the lobby of Kaiser Permanente, Berkeley Medical Offices.