Mai Saporsantos

“Half-remembered dreams,” that’s the utterance about Filipina Contemporary artist Mai Saporsantos’ paintings. Apt, considering that at a quick glance, one sees lightly painted compositions of quirky figures and objects found in hazy interiors and landscapes. Rendered in Saporsantos’ gentle approach to painting, the things and inhabitants of her paintings obey their own laws of space and time. Or as Mai puts it, they are made like the cutting and pasting of collages into places constructed partly from invention, partly from memory.

To see her paintings, to really see them, is to accompany Mai into a scene, a place and get lost in non-linear narratives. According to her, she starts them all by drawing and this takes her somewhere else, learning about herself, wandering about, discovering a new understanding, and drawing upon a lifetime of curiosities from books, tv shows, movies, design, food, music, a conversation, et cetera. What’s also apparent is the joy she gets out of them. In her own words, she cracks herself up when making.

Saporsantos received her BA in Art Studies from the University of the Philippines Diliman, and studied Combined Media Painting and Art in Three-Dimensions at the Art Students League, NY. She has shown at Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery NY, Artery Art Space, Mono8 Gallery, Kaida Contemporary, Ysobel Gallery, and Pinto Art Gallery.