maeve billings
on the easel
Making the final tweaks on "Wake" this week!
I found this blue jay having recently passed away and set up a still life with a white tail deer skull that sits in my studio, and a selection of flowers from the grocery store. This painting is both a sequel and challenge to Funeral (Brainard Rd.) as I feel like I could've done things better. "Wake" is the result. It's looser and more colorful, and I'm really excited to see them next to each other soon.
artist statement
I paint flesh, using the bodies of animals to describe corporeal experiences separated from personhood. Sometimes the body is clean and contained and sometimes it escapes its own abject boundaries where sweat drips, gleaming flesh and bone are exposed, and skin is pulled taut.
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This fascination stems from my own vulnerability. To be a queer, nonbinary person in 2026 means to feel a threat to autonomy over my own flesh. My paintings explore this anxiety. I want the paintings to be beautiful, and, in the same breath, unsettle the viewer with imagery ranging from reverent to gory. I am interested in that fragile dynamic between attraction and repulsion.
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The viewer is invited to share my cognitive dissonance, of loving this imagery of mortality, and hating that it is tethered to bodily subjectivity. There is an intimacy in acknowledging that we are not separate from the raw matter of bodies. That meat on the canvas could be me, because, at the end of the day, I am just meat. Each painting becomes a question: Is this me? Is this you? Is this what we all look like without the veneer of exterior individuality?
upcoming events
OH+5
8000 Dairy Lane, Athens, OH 45701
The OH+5 exhibition celebrates the creative pulse of the Midwest and Appalachia through a dynamic survey of contemporary artwork by artists living in Ohio and its 5 bordering states: Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Now in its fifteenth iteration, this juried exhibition invites submissions across all media, offering a platform for both emerging and established artists to share work that reflects the diversity of thought, technique, and innovation in our region.
As we look to the future of regional artmaking, OH+5 aims to capture the spirit of experimentation and the relevance of place. This is an opportunity to showcase work that speaks to personal or collective experiences, questions tradition, and expands the conversation about what contemporary art can be – here and now.
about the artist
Maeve Billings is an emerging painter from Cleveland (OH) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art. They had their first two-person show at Waterloo Arts in Cleveland, collaborating with Bex Fuller to put on Collective Spaces in January 2019. Maeve has participated in group shows including Rotten Keepsakes, Are We There Yet?, and the Front International CAN Triennial: You Are Here. They have been in various group shows in Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri. Maeve acted as the committee chair for both the 74th and 75th Student Independent Exhibition. They have received awards including the First Agnes Gund Memorial Traveling Award, the Victoria Welling Award, Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Family Scholarship, the Governor’s Show Scholarship, the Ted Frost ‘88 Travel Scholarship, and the Cleveland Women’s Club Scholarship.
