Mayme Donsker at the Aegean Center

Mayme Donsker

Painter and printmaker Mayme Donsker recently came to the Aegean Center to give a presentation of her work and process.  Mayme’s art bridges drawing, printmaking and photography to express a deeply personal unified vision.  Born in Minnesota, Mayme’s presentation began with a description of how her father’s creative approach as a photographer influenced her art over the years.  As an oil painting student in Rome, Mayme came to embrace her love of draughtsmanship setting a new direction in her pieces.  Many of the drawings displayed during the talk were from her series “Love songs,” poetic, semi-biographical images with references to her Minnesota past, life experiences, inspirations, and “dream studios.”  We sense that the “Love songs” say something specific for Mayme but we are free to draw from their meaning what we will, allowing the pieces to speak for themselves.

The “Draftsman and the Ballad Writer”

Mayme then described how collaging images together from old photographs became a new guide and inspiration to find the feeling and ideas she was searching for.  Her collages are simple and seamless–it is striking how one image can convey a coherent sensibility assembled from many different sources. In Mayme’s work lies the notion of timelessness as opposed to nostalgia. In “Avalanche”, a clipping of an old photograph from a Beatles concert translates into something else, a statement of wild passion and ecstasy.

“Avalanche”

Looking at Mayme’s drawings as projected on the wall left one desiring to see the originals, pieces which are built up in such a way where the collage and drawing are intertwined and layered with various shades of matte gray and sparkling black. Mayme described how the collages informed her drawings and through searching for the essence of an image, she aims to find the ‘composition within the composition.’   Magically, when cropped and isolated, a photo clipping can be more open and universal in its meaning. The image “Elbow to Elbow” is not about a specific love story, but about love in general open to each and every interpretation.

“Elbow to Elbow”

The strength of Mayme’s work resides in how genuinely her art reflects her sensibility as a human being.  When listening to Mayme one gets the sense of an artist sensitively tuned to her own distinct vision of humanity.  Her artworks are windows into that vision regardless of the medium or subject.  In describing her pieces, Mayme said,  “We may want our children to grow up and become doctors or artists, but ultimately they become whoever they are meant to be and you love them all the same.”  An unconditional love for her work shines through in Mayme’s art.  It moves and inspires art students and artists alike to aspire to love what they create and in so doing to be true to themselves.

-Jun-Pierre Shiozawa

“A Hard Year”