M Chatfield (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.

Chatfield has studied at numerous institutions including the Art Students League, New York, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York and Hunter College, New York.

She has painted consistently since childhood, beginning with oils, and is currently working in acrylics on large pieces enabling rapid layering while maintaining fresh color. Her paintings are not planned, but discovered, an evolution that is exciting and invigorating.

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. The Narrative work originally titled ‘Out of My Mind’   focuses on direct experience but of a human nature- relationships, childhood memories, family outings, forming a body of work that transcends topicality and embraces an ever-expanding approach to art that is cathartic and reflective transforming the dark into humor.

M Chatfield is currently teaching the ‘Modern Landscape’ at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey.

She lives on a dirt road in Tewksbury NJ and works in a 1780’s stone structure built for making moonshine -happy apple juice.

Inspiration
Chatfield believes that her early exposure to oil painting gave her a comprehension of color that is evident in her fearless though pleasing palette.

For her Sargent defines economy of stroke and composition -Manet and Whistler the quintessential tertiary palette - Picasso, explosive linework - Van Gogh the interpretation of emotion through color.

When Chatfield moved into abstraction she was heavily influenced by Gorky, Guston, Diebenkorn, Kline, de Kooning, Rothko and de stëal