Gateways: Forms of Human Transformation
Within the GATEWAYS sculpture series, geometric forms capture the human condition as beautiful moments of transformation and transcendence. My artistic process asks: How can physical form embody the wonders of human existence to then nurture and inspire the human spirit? By embodying this new geometry of spirit, each sculpture becomes a microcosm for how all humanmade form can serve to awaken humanity to deepest levels of consciousness. Through these sculptures, the human condition becomes a gateway to actualizing the highest and most beautiful potential of humanity by seeing and feeling the beauty in life's most pivotal moments.
YOUtopia: Architecture of Human Potentiality
Each painting in the “YOUtopia Series” imagines an allegory of place that awakens profound consciousness. At the physical level, the paintings invite viewers into imagined improbable places that stir the soul with beauty, light, and ethereal materiality of form. At the metaphysical level, each place “paints” within one’s soul to awaken the infinite potentiality of humanity toward creating a better, more utopian world. This ultimately inspires the next evolution of the highest expression of you. This is the ideal self as seen through the allegory of architecture. This is YOUtopia.
V-SPACE: The Visioning Dimension
The V-SPACE painting collection imagines a world where the vastness of being is limited only by lack of imagination. This visioning dimension (known as V-SPACE) is built to limitlessly hold our potential: where all that is, has been, and can be, exists — awaiting our arrival, so we may awaken and nurture a harmonic universe where all thrives uniquely and as one.
Each painting in the V-SPACE collection, imagines an intricate network of all that is past, present, and future: where interweaving channels, threads, and vessels, serve as a “fabric of consciousness” that binds all of space and time.
The vast yet detailed architectural form that emerges in each painting constructs a model of this hidden V-SPACE system that underpins the universe. Thus, each painting captures an “architecture of full potentiality” that reflects the true you — so you can look into each V-SPACE and feel the vastness of your being. In other words, by looking into V-SPACE, you are looking into your highest self.
EcoScrit: The Language of Nature
A hieroglyph is a Greek word that means "sacred carvings". The paintings in this ECOSCRIT series build upon this meaning, as through my artistic process each painting brings forth sacred markings (carved onto paper) that recode the deep inner workings of nature's beauty. In this way, each painting translates nature's most profound and inner poetic beauty as a new hieroglyphic language that awakens and nurtures human enlightenment, by speaking directly to the soul. This new hieroglyphic soul-language that deciphers nature's deep poetic beauty is called ECOSCRIT.
STILL-MOTION: Places that Bend Time
A collection of drawings that explore architectural paradox in terms of poetic fluidity. Captured as ink on paper, each drawing depicts a building existing between a solid and liquid state. This concept experiments with the ultimate notion of regenerative architecture, where a building is able to morph slowly or quickly based upon real-time need. As a humanity, we are all in continuous still-motion as the passage of time expands and contracts dependent upon our perception. Inspired by this paradox, each drawing in this collection asks: How can we evolve our relationship with time and the narratives we apply to it as we live lives in still-motion? By experiencing each drawing, one enters into a different realm of time where architecture serves as a clock-like instrument that turns the solid fluidity of time into a shapeshifting canvas for awakening deeper levels of being.
![Unfolding Seconds by Maria Lorena Lehman](https://assets.artworkarchive.com/image/upload/t_square_crop_small/v1/user_40228/UnfoldingSeconds-WEB_dwxes3.jpg)
![Into Infinity by Maria Lorena Lehman](https://assets.artworkarchive.com/image/upload/t_square_crop_small/v1/user_40228/IntoInfinity-WEB_qn9sfe.jpg)
![Timed Rewind by Maria Lorena Lehman](https://assets.artworkarchive.com/image/upload/t_square_crop_small/v1/user_40228/TimedRewind-WEB_rzkvp3.jpg)
INNER-FACE: Constructing the Story Within
The INNER-FACE Collection explores the human face to uncover forms of emotion in response to an allegorical architecture. Each drawing in the collection captures a life-changing moment told through the story written on a person's face. Thus, the drawings invite one to imagine the architecture that the subject sees in the distance, off the paper. This is the artist's invitation to imagine architecture informed by the way light radiates emotion on a person's face. Ultimately, architecture that sparks deep emotive response can uplevel the human condition in ways that illuminate the soul.
![The Window at Sunrise by Maria Lorena Lehman](https://assets.artworkarchive.com/image/upload/t_square_crop_small/v1/user_40228/MeetingTheIdealSelf-WEB_oqk7hm.jpg)
![The First Step by Maria Lorena Lehman](https://assets.artworkarchive.com/image/upload/t_square_crop_small/v1/user_40228/TheFirstStep-WEB_vvwpel.jpg)
![Beckoning of the Starlit City by Maria Lorena Lehman](https://assets.artworkarchive.com/image/upload/t_square_crop_small/v1/user_40228/MoonlightReflection-WEB_pijprz.jpg)