Parsonage Gallery, May-June 2024

There is an annunciative power to these paintings and sculptures, which seem to have gathered strength and ambition as they gestated, coming into being in a surge of creative energy over the past year.  At the same time, there is an exquisite tenderness to Maiden’s works, both formally and thematically.  Her muted palette of powder blue, blushing pink, and creamy white conjure a world just beginning to ripen into reality; or perhaps a past one, visible only through the gauzy veil of memory.  

There is no easy sentimentality here but rather a deliberate choice to engage softly with the world, in all its vulnerabilities.  The title of this exhibition, “Burdens of the Bird,” captures the artist’s unique sensitivity to invisible wounds and hidden anguish—the weight we bear even unto heaven.  The artist often closes her correspondence with a single word, “gentle,” and in this simple valediction an entire ethic and aesthetic seem to reside.  Only in tender recognition of others’ burdens do we untether ourselves.

  —Dr Aaron Rosen, author, curator and scholar.  Executive Director of The Clemente Course in the Humanities; Founder & Director of The Parsonage Gallery; Visiting Professor at the King's College London; Arts Editor: Image Journal.