LINCOLN MAYNARD: Local painter likes to emphasize the big picture

Painter switches to first love later in life

The vaulted walls of Lincoln Maynard's Henderson home are a proclamation to the world that he is an artist. Dozens of taut canvases ripe with layers of paint and mixed media surround visitors who enter Maynard's home. The paintings -- abstract, dark and many as tall as a person -- play with the light that filters in through small windows near the ceiling.

Even as necks crane up to see to the highest pieces near the rafters, Maynard is happy to escort his guests through his home gallery, jumping excitedly from one piece to the next telling its story and urging visitors to touch the canvas. In fact, Maynard encourages everyone to touch his paintings. He is adamant that his pieces are about more than just the visual. They also are about the dichotomous textures -- how the visually rough patch feels smooth.

"I'm not afraid of size. I'm not afraid of texture," said Maynard, who has been known to use dryer lint as a secret weapon on canvas. "I try to get a mood or a feeling. I'm not looking for symmetry."

Perhaps Maynard received some of his fearless inspiration from years spent working on theater sets. For six years as the stage supervisor he helped develop sets for Siegfried & Roy's show. In the 1980s, he was among a handful of artisans recruited to create the fantasy land of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for the Boston Ballet.

But it was the vaulted ceilings of his 5-year-old Seven Hills home that he shares with his wife of 22 years, Jacie, that inspired him to start busting out the large-scale canvases.

"The walls just cried out for it," he said.

Maynard came to Las Vegas with his family at the cusp of his adolescence in 1963, a week after President Kennedy was assassinated. A self-proclaimed hippie, he chose to stay in Southern Nevada following his 1969 graduation from Clark High School and subsequent years earning degrees in communications and history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

But in the years since he met Jacie in 1978, he earned his college degrees, had two sons and a successful technical theater career, he let his early love of drawing and painting fall by the wayside.

He said he was distracted from art. Some distractions are good memories, such as seeing The Doors play for $6 at the now-defunct Ice Palace on Sahara Avenue. But there were tragedies, too, that have occupied his mind like the sudden, unexpected death of one of his sons two years ago.

"That was a shock to us. It was very difficult to come back from," Jacie Maynard said.

It has been in the last six years that Maynard has gone back to his first love. And with this awakening it was straight to abstraction with paints and whatever else he can get his hands on.

"Now it's my solace. It's my strength. It's my joy," he said.

Maynard estimates that he has produced about 200 paintings over the past six years. His current untitled series numbers 50 pieces and counting. The series plays with light and dark, as well as textures that are visible and touchable. Another key in Maynard's work is integrated layering, each with its own complexities.

Now the Henderson artist says he hopes to occupy the rest of his life painting and spending time with his family. Indeed, his work is a family affair because Jacie helps promote his work and his son, Dylan, keeps up the artist's Web site, www.lmaynard.com, with his graphic arts and Internet background.

Maynard's work can be seen at Marshall Galleries in Henderson and at a number of other commercial locations throughout the valley.


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