Visual Artist Maya Seas Heralds the Divine Feminine at Expo Chicago Debut
The artist opens up about her self-developed rituals, personal mythologies, and the spirituality within her work, now on view at the Chicago art fair until April 27.
Maya Seas approaches the act of painting with intent but feeds off resonance. The Los Angeles-based artist liberally uses her energy and emotions as a compass to construct the inner sanctums of her personal mythology. But amongst the intimate, candid nature of her work, she establishes a sense of safety and comfort first and foremost. “The main emotion I’m always looking for is the feeling of safety,” she tells L’OFFICIEL. “If I make something and I feel like it’s not giving me that feeling or if any of the figures feel like they don’t feel safe, then I destroy it. I won’t let it exist.”
At Expo Chicago 2025, Superposition Gallery presented Sanctuaries of Perception, a striking dual booth presentation featuring Seas’ work (debuting at the Windy City art fair) alongside that of Damien Davis. The presentation—which opened Thursday—brings together two powerful artistic voices, each navigating the charged terrain of identity, the body, and how we perceive both. Davis, a Black, queer artist and curator, leans into the political weight of abstraction through meticulously arranged laser-cut acrylics. His pieces resist figuration, instead unraveling the myth of neutrality in formalism by highlighting how social bias colors even the most seemingly objective shapes and lines. This conceptual foundation sets the stage for Seas’ work to respond and resonate in conversation, forming a shared space that questions what it means to be seen.
Before Seas ever puts brush to canvas, she prepares her body and spirit with deliberate care. Painting, for her, is a ritual—one that begins with lighting candles on her altar, saying prayers, and setting the mood with carefully chosen music. “I usually have to exercise so that my endorphins and everything are set up, because I’ve noticed that my mood gets transferred into the paintings,” she says. This emotional transference is especially vital when painting faces, where even her own expression can influence the outcome. “If I’m frowning and I’m trying to make it a smile, the energy makes it feel like they’re grimacing,” she explains. “That’s the energy that comes through, unless I’m actually evoking a happy memory in my mind.”
For her, painting is a method of worldbuilding as well. This grounding practice invites spontaneity, allowing Seas to channel the energy of her surroundings into layered narratives and dreamlike figures. Often portrayed as women and children, these characters serve as vessels for a mythology she has crafted herself—rooted in global traditions but wholly personal. “What makes it more of a personal mythology is the fusion of all these different stories into one storyline,” she explains. Each painting becomes both a sanctuary and a narrative, pulsing with presence, prayer, and protection. Especially amidst today’s turbulent world, her work offers refuge. “I try to approach the work as a prayer practice as well as a manifestation,” she adds.
At a time when chaos precedes calm, Seas finds her inner sanctuary not in the reality around her, but in her own imagination she brings to life through her art. “I don’t paint what I see, I paint what I imagine,” she says. In doing so, she crafts a dreamscape that feels at once unfamiliar and deeply known. Through ancestral memory and spiritual practice, she taps into a collective past—a pre-colonial, softer version of life where women bathe in peace and sisterhood is sacred. These quiet, everyday moments become opulent through her use of 24-karat gold and oil, transforming the mundane into something sacred. “Once the world becomes more and more chaotic,” she reflects, “you start to realize those moments are actually luxuries.
Seas is intuitively in communion—with her ancestors, her materials, and the spirits she summons through ritual. “I like to start with water,” she says, describing how she lets acrylic and liquid drip and settle, almost as if the painting reveals itself to her. Then comes the oil, rich and tactile—“like I’m moisturizing them,” she joked, referring to her figures. Each layer becomes an act of care. The final touch: gold. “At first it was an acknowledgment of my family,” she explains, describing the 24-karat accents as heirlooms in their own right. “Now I see gold almost as a thread of memory that preserves the memory of each moment.”
Mysticism and hidden knowledge pulse beneath the surface of her work, where astrology, myth, and spiritual secrecy quietly guide the viewer. She draws from the ancient lore of the Pleiades—an age-old constellation tied to matriarchy and feminine power—to construct a personal mythology rooted in esoteric truths. Her figures, often painted with eyes closed or gazes averted, seem to live in a world just out of reach, sharing silent secrets among themselves. “There’s something that they know that we don’t, that the viewer is not privy to,” she says, emphasizing a “secret knowing” passed intuitively rather than spoken aloud. It’s not just mystery for mystery’s sake—these choices are a form of protection, a deliberate withholding that preserves the autonomy and inner life of her subjects.
Seas’ invites the viewer to explore their own interpretations of her work, as they can be highly subjective. Though her paintings often center on the intimate bonds between women, they are not confined to traditional or biological definitions. Instead, they evoke the layered, complex, and sometimes messy dynamics between feminine beings—connections that, while varied, remain vital. “It’s not necessarily a biological family, but it’s the bond between feminine beings; it’s such a specific thing and it’s not necessarily super simple all the time,” she says. “There’s all these layers and nuances, it’s a really specific relationship. I think, especially now, those are the relationships that keep a lot of us alive.”
Sanctuaries of Perception is presented by the Superposition Gallery at Expo Chicago 2025, on view now until April 27. Booth 114 can be found in the exposure section, available for viewing from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central Time.
