Maureen Chatfield is a contemporary artist whose work fuses New York Abstract Expressionism with Bay Area Figurative painting. Her process is spontaneous and intuitive—shapes, lines, and color harmonies emerge organically as she paints, rather than from premeditated plans. Each piece is a response to the emotional and experiential forces shaping her life, with memories and feelings translating directly into color.
Her work is in constant evolution, built through layered experimentation that reveals the traces beneath—pentimento that adds depth and complexity. Her non-objective pieces stem from internal reflection, while her abstracted landscapes are inspired by nature, transformed through her unique internal lens. Influences such as Gorky, Guston, Diebenkorn, Kline, de Kooning, Rothko, and de Staël guided her shift into abstraction.
Chatfield studied at the Art Students League, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, FIT, and Hunter College. Painting since childhood, she began with oils and now works in acrylics on large canvases, allowing for fast layering and vibrant color. For her, painting is a dynamic process of discovery—invigorating, unplanned, and ever-changing.
Although we tend to shy away from interpretating abstract work, Perfect brings the outdoors in. The light blue air, the cream sand, the gray rocks, and the luscious rusts visualize a perfect day out of doors. The impasto texture gives this painting a wonderful tactile feel to the surface while the subtle touches of black create a sense of movement throughout the canvas. As always, Chatfield’s color choices are spot on in this work.
Maureen Chatfield is a contemporary artist whose body of work is a unique blend of New York Abstract Expressionism and Bay Area Figurative painting. Her works are never premeditated; instead, she allows the color harmonies, receding and overlapping lines, and delicate balance of amorphous shapes to emerge while she paints. Her works are intuitive responses to the myriad forces that shape her life—emotions and memories that translate into color. Her work process is one of constant experiment and change - building layers of form and color, revealing the underlying pentimento. Her Non-Objective work is more interior, emerging directly from what is in her head, while the landscape abstracted work arises from direct experience—what she sees in nature, captured by her internal camera and explosively transformed. When Chatfield moved into abstraction she was heavily influenced by Gorky, Guston, Diebenkorn, Kline, de Kooning, Rothko and de stëal