Artist Mackenzie Maisel carves her path in NYC’s male art world | amNewYork

Mackenzie Maisel has raw talent that’s ready to make her voice heard.

The streets of New York are a canvas for the hungry, the hopeful, and the audacious—especially for the young women armed with brushes, paints, and a fiery resolve. It’s 2024, and still, the city is a battleground for the female artist, a place where talent meets the concrete, where vision meets the edge of the unknown.

There’s a lingering ache, an insatiable thirst for more women to cut through the thick smog of the male-dominated art world, not just to participate but to take up space. We need more women everywhere—in galleries, on canvases, in curation, at the helm of major art movements.

Enter Maisel, a 23-year-old fresh from Ohio who is still cutting her teeth in this concrete jungle. She’s also on the hunt, still exploring the depths of her voice and the edges of her craft. Her canvases explode with a mix of pop art and spiritual symbolism, a marriage of the sacred and the surreal that feels both familiar and daringly new.

You see her searching in her work—pulling threads from her own life, testing the boundaries between spiritual expression and everyday observation.

Maisel’s pieces are like visual diary entries, vibrant and gestural, pulling you into her orbit as she figures things out. Her style is still developing, and that’s part of the thrill.

There’s an authenticity in her exploration—a willingness to show the process, the imperfections, and the triumphs of someone carving out their identity in a world still finding room for women like her. In this stage, her work doesn’t pretend to have all the answers; instead, it asks questions, blurs the lines, and dares viewers to see the divine amidst the mundane.

She’s young, she’s hungry, and she’s still finding her way—but that’s what makes it all so electric. Her art invites us into her process, transforming vibrant, everyday scenes into surreal sanctuaries of reflection. Whether she’s painting or sculpting, Maisel is cultivating connection, her work becoming a bridge between her inner world and the buzzing chaos of New York.

She’s not just painting; she’s unfolding, developing, and searching for something bigger—a visual testament to the journey of finding one’s voice in a world that still needs more women to make some noise.

Follow her @mackenziemaiselart.