Maura Holden: I was born in 1967. I grew up in white-collar suburbs and poor urban neighbourhoods in Philadelphia, PA. My father was a scientist and my mother was (and still is) a survey research analyst. I attended public school and a liberal arts college, but I learned to draw and paint on my own. Drawing was always my refuge. Even in school, I hid in the backs of classrooms, teleporting myself to other dimensions, sketching my daydreams.

MH: My irresistible imagination.

MH: My mother was the first to encourage me. She always seemed to understand that I needed to sit for hours, making art. From the time I could hold a crayon, I wanted to create something. She gave me art materials. She taught me to sew, and to mix plaster. She set up a craft and paint studio for me in the kitchen. Whenever I had a crazy idea, she would take me out hunting for supplies. She never questioned or criticized my designs; she just facilitated them.
Of course, many of my early crafting experiments were absurd failures, but she let me go through the process uninterrupted - a blessing, because even as a child I was determined to learn by experience. Life itself was art to me. At age four I envisioned a fashion creation to express my ethereal persona: purple thigh-high stockings, a "fairy" dress, wings, and a platinum wig. Mom helped me construct this costume, and tolerated me wearing it in public. I have to think that this set a lifelong precedent.

MH: Psychedelic dreamscapes, photographed with a small brush.

MH: As long as I won't be consigned to a world of only this colour, I'll admit to loving electric purple (still). Not for home decorating. Not for food. But I love that purple stardust that sparkles in the night sky.
I'm very attracted to circles: the feminine, the nucleus, the cycle, completeness... Round paintings are ideally suited to suggesting whole worlds. The platonic solids interest me too, in that they are ideal shapes, bristling with beautiful numeric patterns. The vesica pisces is a special friend, and I enjoy all of those ratcheted flowers you can make with a Spirograph, or by attacking a circle with a compass...

MH: I wouldn't mind better writing skills.

MH: Oil on wooden panels.

MH: In a roundabout way, I feel influenced by those chameleon-like actors (Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett are examples) who create a whole world of manners and memory for each role. The thing that links their metamorphic genius with my painting is something in the way of losing one's identity for art. In painting, I want to abandon my personal trappings, and draw a different world from the collective unconscious.

MH: All of the arts interest me, and they all have some sort of impact on my work. When musicians and performers play in the street, an ordinary day is full of poetry. The memory of it colours my thoughts during those long hours at the easel. When I read a great book, my mind returns to its passages while I paint... Art brings out the beauty and pattern of life; it intensifies feeling. The better the art I've recently enjoyed, the more sensitivity I bring to my own.

MH: Using the Internet is the best thing artists can possibly do for culture, and themselves. On the web, we are finally free to show independently, and free to meet other creative birds all over the world. Amazing synergies start in cyberspace: it's like street culture, only the neighbourhood is global. Creating websites and blogs can be an artistic activity in itself -- perfect for the aesthetic temperament.

MH: My stuffed rabbit, Easter. He's still with us, bald and falling to bits.

MH: A new type of experiment: The Visionary Revue wanted artists' writings about Entheogens and Visionary Art, so I wrote a short story. It will be in the next issue, along with submissions from some wonderfully talented artists - I can't wait to read what they wrote. The anticipated release date is Spring, 2007. [Visionary Revue Website]

MH: It is very difficult to survive as an artist. I wish I could say something more upbeat, but the last thing artists need is false hope. The only way is to accept no other destiny. If your greatest pleasure is creating, this will come naturally, and your enjoyment will sustain you. Conceive an irrational determination to make your visions reality, no matter what people say, no matter what obstacles or material poverty you experience. Money is not always an artist's payment; we are sometimes paid in friendship, skill, the development of our characters, and the joy of creating - a great bounty, really. Learn to live on and by those fruits, and you will survive anything.
In art, all paths are customized. My own particular way of surviving is to work at part-time jobs, three days per week on average, and to paint during every other day. But I've had some lucky years when bunches of paintings sold, or financial angels gifted me, and these have been glorious. I quit, of course, and every day was filled with painting, or other types of creativity. I don't regret having had the jobs - I met my partner, Jessica, and a few of my dearest friends through work -- but it would be better for my wrists and brain to get free of non-art jobs forever. Most artists have to compromise this way, or by teaching, or by making commercial art. As long as artists continue their real work, they can consider themselves survivors.

MH: All for completely different reasons:
A Confederacy of Dunces, The Loved One, The Alexandria Quartet, The God of Small Things, Orlando, The Diaries of Anais Nin, Tales of the City, The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Flies, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Frankenstein, Dracula... Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Carlos Castaneda, Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Waters, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, William Styron, Jorge Luis Borges, Rudyard Kipling, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, Leonard Cohen, Aldous Huxley, Anthony Burgess, Kurt Vonnegut, Milan Kundera, Hermann Hesse... Oliver Sacks, Joseph Campbell, John Michell, Colin Wilson, Manly P. Hall, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion...

MH: Fragmentary:
Yma Sumac, Dead Can Dance, Sevara Nazarkhan, Axiom of Choice, Diamanda Galas, Sandy Denny, Joni Mitchell... Calexico, Pixies, Bongwater, Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, Throwing Muses, Belle and Sebastian, Beck, Moloko, Orbital, Morcheeba, Jamiroquai, Parliament-Funkadelic, Thievery Corporation, Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Jethro Tull, Hendrix, Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Tool, Tom Waits, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, Django Reinhardt...

MH: I've given up fear, since it seems to lead to the deaths of countless innocent people.