Cynthia Mailman

Cynthia Mailman (born 1942, Bronx, New York) is an American painter and educator. She is known for figurative and landscape works done in a "cool, pared-down" style. Her early paintings were presented from a perspective inside the artist's VW van, looking outward, and include mirrors, wipers or other interior elements against the exterior landscape. By doing this, Mailman put the observer in the driver's seat, which is also the artist's point of view. According to Lawrence Alloway, "The interplay of directional movement and expanding space is a convincing expansion of the space of landscape painting".

Education

Mailman graduated with an academic diploma in Advertising Art and Illustration from the School of Industrial Art (SIA), earned a BS in Fine Art and Education from Pratt Institute, and received an MFA in painting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.

Feminism

Cynthia Mailman was an active participant in the feminist art movement. She was an original member of SOHO20 Artists (est. 1973), often called SOHO20 Gallery, a feminist, artist-run exhibition space. Mailman also participated in The Sister Chapel, a collaborative installation that celebrated female role models, which premiered at P.S.1 in January 1978. For The Sister Chapel, Mailman painted God, a monumental painting of the supreme deity in the form of a powerful nude woman.

Commissions

In 1979, Mailman was commissioned to create a mural for the PATH train concourse at the original World Trade Center. The commission was by the Port Authority of NY and NJ through the CETA Artist Project. The 8-by-54-foot mural was entitled Commuter Landscape, a view of the Pulaski Skyway as seen through the train windows. It was seen by over 100,000 people a day. It was destroyed in the first terrorist attack on the WTC in 1993. Other commissions came from City Walls, Inc. for a 24-by-26-foot wall mural in Staten Island, and from The Wall Street Journal for the 2000 Cow Parade in NYC

Collections

Mailman has had over 20 solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Everson Museum, the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, the Staten Island Museum, as well as the Sylvia Sleigh Collection at the Rowan University Art Gallery. Her work is also in numerous private collections. Mailman has received grants from the New York State (1976, 1987) and Staten Island, NY (1987) art council, as well as from the NJ Committee on the Humanities (1979) and a CAPS grant (1976). Her work has been reviewed and discussed in many major newspapers and art journals(see below).