On a very basic level, Mahaffey’s style is an answer to the question, what kind of art should she make? As a child, she wanted to be an illustrator. Children’s book art has been a big inspiration. She was—and still is—a fan of cartoons and comic books. Dr. Seuss books, vintage Disney, Scooby-Doo, The Jetsons, and Hellboy are all part of her pool of influences. During her two years at Chicago’s American Academy of Art, she struggled with deciding on a major. Should she go for illustration or fine art? “I didn’t really want to choose,” she says of the two disciplines. “I started trying to figure out a way to meld them, merge them together, where they can kind of have a little bit of both.”
Early on, Mahaffey’s work fit solidly in the realm of fantasy art. She illustrated mermaids and warriors and captured the sort of pastoral settings that are reminiscent of tales like The Lord of the Rings. With time, she pursued another visual language. Mahaffey leaned into her pop art influences and switched from primarily relying on watercolor to painting with acrylics. Fantasy has since become a deeper theme connecting her paintings.
“The 2-D is supposed to represent the whimsy, wonder, and imagination that we all possess,” says Mahaffey. The portraits and heavily rendered portions of the paintings root the images in reality. “We all have that side of us that’s more fantasy, more whimsy, more imagination,” says Mahaffey, “but in our daily lives, we don’t necessarily show it.”
Earlier in her career, Mahaffey painted a lot of adults, particularly seniors. But she began to think back on her general conversations with older people and the regrets that were expressed, how they might have wished they could return to their youth and perhaps do things differently. “There’s that thing about getting old and having regrets,” she says. However, she adds, “you could still live somewhat like a kid, but you don’t necessarily have to be a kid.”
While the paintings largely focus on children now, they aren’t literally about children. “Even though the figure represents a kid, they don’t necessarily have to be an actual kid, more like the kid that’s inside of you,” she says.
Mahaffey notes that people might think of youth as something they can’t get back. She has a different attitude. “Just by living, in a sense, you will feel younger,” she says. “You won’t feel so much regret if you start enjoying the things that you do instead of taking everything a little bit too seriously.”
When Mahaffey references pop culture in her work, she draws from different eras. She might include nods to Golden Age U.S. cartoons, classic anime or eight-bit video games. It might also include bits of twenty-first century pop culture. This broad span of visual cues allows her messages to speak to multiple generations of viewers. The kids in the paintings aren’t necessarily the children of the 2020s. They might be Boomers or Gen X, Millennials, or Gen Z.
I wanted it to have a feeling of victory, a feeling of resilience, feelings of never giving up.”
Sometimes, Mahaffey’s pieces are influenced by personal situations. In “Wear and Tear”—from her 2020 Thinkspace solo show Deconstructed—she depicts the face of a young girl split in half by a group of cartoon characters who appear to be climbing out of her head. On one side, the girl’s mouth forms a soft smile. On the other side, her expression is pensive as two tears drip towards her cheekbone.
Mahaffey says that, at the time of making this painting, she struggled with balancing “life in the art world” and wanted the piece to reflect that. “I wanted to go with what it felt to be pulled in one direction and another direction,” Mahaffey explains, “but, at the same time, having to hide what I was truly feeling inside, without letting it show on the outside.”
“Wear and Tear” was a more complicated piece to paint. “The hardest part was trying to paint realistic skin tones around the 2-D and then trying to go back in and trying to fix,” says Mahaffey, noting that she would work right to the edge of the figures, working to ensure that the paints didn’t bleed into each other. “It was definitely easier to draw than it was to actually paint, when it came to doing flesh tone right next to the 2-D figures inside the face,” she says.
“Wear and Tear” is a beautiful example of Mahaffey’s knack for merging two very different stylistic choices. In her portraits, she captures the depth of skin tones and hair colors, while the imaginative elements maintain the flatness associated with animation art. She says that, often, it’s those 2-D elements that are more difficult to paint. “I’ll have to do four or five layers of the same color just to get white gloves,” she says. “Three coats for the white gloves and then wait until the next day, when it’s dry, and then do some more coats and then keep doing it over and over again just to get that one white to be very stark.”
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