"I enjoy memorializing the timeless beauty of nature by capturing its nuanced textures of color, light, and form in both soft/hard and oil pastels. I exaggerate color vibrancy to evoke nostalgic feelings of childhood awe while bringing the viewer into an intimate place of calm and hope."
Maxine Nodel is an award-winning versatile artist who earned her B.F.A. from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. She exhibits and sells her work nationally and internationally and has had work on public display throughout the New York City metropolitan area. She also holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College where she studied privately with the late Beat poet, Allen Ginsberg.
Maxine is an artist member of the Salmagundi Club and Edward Hopper House Art Center in New York where she was named Artist of the Month in 2013 and invited to give a public art talk about her design-based drawings in 2018. In 2021, Maxine's art was featured in the Italian arts journal, itcentrotirreno.it, when arts and cultural journalist, Ippolita Sicoli, wrote Visions of Infinity, an extensive piece on Maxine's nature art and invited her to have a solo show in Cosenza, Italy.
In 2002, Maxine founded Millennium Art Academy, a visual art high school for underserved students in the Bronx she created with a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grant. In 2009, the school received the Lincoln Center Institute First-Place Award for Most Imaginative Arts Curriculum in New York City. Currently, Maxine is a visiting teaching artist at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and prior to that was a drawing instructor at the National Art League in Douglaston, New York.
Maxine comes from a family of notable painters, illustrators, illuminators, opera singers, pianists, composers, and violinists. She currently works in her studio at the Arts Westchester building in White Plains, New York.