Maya Beauchamp
Maya Beauchamp is an interdisciplinary artist based in Falkirk and Edinburgh, recently graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art’s undergraduate painting programme. In 2021 she moved from Essex to pursue her dream of studying art, and has since become an active member of the arts scene in Scotland, as well as recently participating in shows in Cambridge and London. Her practice is based in painting, collage, digital processes and sound, as well as performance under her drag moniker ‘Tainted Love’.
Maya’s focus over the last few years of her practice has been queer grief, our relationship with the departed as queer and underprivileged communities, fault, accident, and the fragility of memory. Her work features sparse, alien compositions of collaged physical forms and brushstrokes influenced by the American abstract expressionists. She draws from queer written and visual culture, 20th century film, Christian icons, battered ageing walls and the richness of natural forms. She usually puts her drawing surfaces through harsh processes such as sanding, scraping and razor-marks in her pursuit of a rich, layered patina.
Agony' is part of a series I painted for my honours year at the Edinburgh College of Art, drawing from Jarman's film Sebastiane. In that time I worked toward sparse, dreamy collages with vast lightly coloured voids and floating collaged physical features. Specifically this work draws from Sebastian's martyrdom scene, abstracting the martyr's anguished mouth into an expression of pain without the body. The prose and figure draws from my interest in queer grief, especially how grief and martyrdom become unreliable, fractured and altered by time and memory, especially as much contemporary gay identity pays homage to the dead and damned of yesteryear. The work was a turning point into my current style, marking an interest in small, tragic works inspired by the scale of Christian icons.
