In a career that has spanned some 60 years, Roosevelt alumna and Abstract Expressionist painter Maureen Sylvia Lighthall has channeled personal pain and inspiration into remarkable art. Born in England in 1941, Maureen was the daughter of refugees who escaped Nazi Germany, then after the war sought a better life in the United States. Growing up in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, she was always encouraged to read and appreciate art from an early age. She remembers her mother taking her on downtown visits to the Chicago Public Library’s main branch in what is now the Chicago Cultural Center. Maureen’s mother, a professionally trained artist in Germany before the war, worked hard in her retirement to become a successful artist displaying and selling her work.
Maureen’s understanding of artistic expression’s possibilities was further expanded when she attended Roosevelt University as an Illinois State Scholar. While she was attending to earn a bachelor’s degree in English, she was inspired by an arts appreciation class that spotlighted abstract styles and the power of negative space.
“I remember reading art books and watching films that presented a tree, but they emphasized that the real power of the image is in the space between the leaves and the shapes of the shadows rather than the literal representation,” she says.
As much as she enjoyed the world of art and visual expression, Maureen focused on her educational career by teaching high school English, composition and literature for 27 years (most of them spent in southwestern Chicago suburbs of District 218). It wasn’t until the early 1990s, when her son David was diagnosed with AIDS, that Maureen began to paint. She painted alongside David as part of his treatment plan, and when he passed away, she channeled her grief into a series of paintings that allowed her to express herself and honor her son.
“That tragic part of my life is what defined my characteristics as an artist,” she says. “What's in my emotional mind dictates what come to the surface so that I sometimes don't even realize what I'm doing. After David passed away, I started these bone pictures and realized I was trying to reconstruct my son, because a year after he died, we scattered his ashes in New Hampshire. The image of bones floating in milk with pastel shading linked my emotions to my son, so the abstraction came from feelings. My fellow art students told me I expressed David’s spirit in the vivid color and motion of my paintings.”
After retiring and moving to Harbert, Michigan with her husband, Maureen began to pursue an art career full-time. She received personal instruction from professional painter and Art Institute of Chicago adjunct professor, Alain Gavin at the Art Institute and at his Evanston studio. Maureen developed an Abstract Expressionist style that emphasizes her bold work, layering watercolors, acrylics and oil on paper, canvas and mylar transparencies.
According to Gavin, “Lighthall's a daredevil of an artist fearlessly jumping into new experimentations, projects and media. Like Jackson Pollock, the emotional power of her turbulent painting is tempered by her bravura with order and harmony.”
Maureen’s work has been showcased throughout the Midwest, including the Purdue University North Central campus in Indiana and the South Bend Jewish Community Center. To honor the legacy of her son David, she also exhibited a series of paintings at the Center on Halsted in Chicago, which serves as an LGBTQ+ health and resource center for the city. She continues her education with monthly Zoom seminars with Alain Gavin. She also teaches her own art workshops in San Diego.
“I always tell aspiring artists to be confident in themselves and their vision,” she says. “Most of the work comes from knowing you have something to say as an individual and allowing the work to reflect that. Sometimes your emotions, and a free-flowing brush do the work.”
