BIOGRAPHY

British born artist Andrew Maishman studied art in Nottingham, England before emigrating to America, where he graduated from the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts.  From 1983 to 1987 Maishman exhibited with the Blackwell St. Gallery in Dover, New Jersey, then joined City Without Walls Gallery in Newark, and consequently relocated to his current studio on Halsey Street in 1988.

During the early 1990s Maishman painted large murals for clients such as New Jersey Transit and the Meadowlands Fair at Giants Stadium, which led him to work for a professional mosaic company translating commissioned artworks into mosaic murals for NYC subways primarily.  Concurrently, Maishman developed a unique mural program for teenagers, implementing it in 1995, 1996, and 1997 within the walls of a minimum security jail for NYC juvenile offenders.  Also in 1996, the New Jersey Historical Society commissioned Maishman and his program for their Kids Bridge Mural.

In 1999, while working on a new language for color to upgrade the first color language that he had developed for his original mural program, Maishman had an artistic breakthrough that galvanized his entire painting philosophy and career direction.  This breakthrough gave birth to an entirely new painting method that is now patented, and has achieved a number of distinctions:  Studioworks, a Communities in Schools of NJ initiative dedicated to helping kids prepare for life, has used Maishman and his painting method numerous times; after being repeatedly contracted by Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital to benefit their patients, it was then requested by the Commissioner for the NJ State Dept. of Human Services; it has been commissioned three times by the Greater Newark Conservancy for their Newark Youth Leadership Program;  and the Newark Museum has used Maishman for their ‘Arts Infusion’ program for Newark Public School teachers.  He was also the recipient of the Newark Arts Council’s 2002 and 2003 ArtStart grant program, as well as the Essex County Local Arts Grant Program.  Maishman has provided team-building workshops for corporate staff members, and conducts workshops and private painting sessions for adults, couples, and families.

In his concurrent career as a professional fine artist, Maishman is the subject of the short film “Portals” documenting the rise of his new distinctive painting method, with which he won a major commission to create a 1000 sf. “Tangram” Mural that opened in 2007. Maishman has had various exhibitions, including a one-man show of his larger works at DopDop Salon in Soho NYC in 2005, and at Seton Hall University in 2004.  In addition Maishman is an onstage performance painter, participating in “happenings,” where he engages with the audience and quickly orchestrates an interactive painting.  Maishman has performed at various venues, including the show Spontaneous Combustion (in the alternative environment of Lux Magna Exhibitions in Newark); at an event hosted by the Arts Council of the Morris Area in a corporate environment; and at City Without Walls in a traditional gallery environment.