MACAULAY WOODS—Artist instagram: @macaulaywoodsstudi0 | @macaulaywoodsstudio | macaulaywoods.com | Based in Massachusetts
EDUCATION
BFA, Multimedia Studies, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA, 1994
CURRENT WORK
Lazarus Ball (2024–2026)
A series of large-scale abstract paintings in four books, engaging grief, war, surveillance, corporate corruption, and political violence through gestural mark-making and biomorphic figures — “sprites” — that enact narratives of mortality, displacement, witness, and resistance. Woods approaches painting as action in motion, working with brayers and brushes in sweeping, urgent gestures. The series extends into animated sequences in which the sprites enact emotional arcs across cinematic space.
Recent sub-series include:
2026 The Book of the Night explores techno-fascist governance, surveillance, and eroded visibility through gestural abstraction. Layered marks and dynamic composition convey tension, exclusion, mapping the mechanisms of control and the souls they consume.
2025 The Book of the Sky Surveillance, technological power, and human vulnerability rendered through biomorphic sprites navigating dystopian, multi-layered abstract space. Shifting palettes and dynamic compositions map tension, observation and resistance.
2025 The Book of the Dead Sprites enact narratives of mortality, displacement, and resilience. Integrates hieroglyphic-like scrawls as ritual testimony and collective witness. Engages directly with the ongoing atrocities in Gaza and the global cost of institutional silence by echoing the journey of souls through a perilous landscape.
2024 The Book of the Heart explores grief, presence, and endurance through action-driven abstraction. Painting as ritual and structure, tracing repetition, motion, and emotional intensity across large-scale canvases.
2023 Helix series Originating from ink sketches and automatic drawing created between 2014–2023, the Helix Series transforms Boschian and Giacometti-inspired figures into large-scale gestural paintings. Sprites, beasts, and angels inhabit dynamic biomorphic ecosystems combining spontaneity, improvisation, and narrative action.
INDEPENDENT PRACTICE
CALIFORNIA (2009–2023)
Photography, writing, poetry, and digital media work engaging contemporary social and political issues. This body of work laid the conceptual foundation for the current painting practice, which continues to grapple with political, social, and ethical narratives through abstraction and gestural mark-making.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2007 | 13 Paintings, Cambridge Commons, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA
Curated by Kristen Mills
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2009 | National Prize Show, University Place Gallery, Cambridge, MA
Juried by Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator, ICA Boston
2008 | Blue, University Place Gallery, Cambridge, MA
Juried by Jen Mergel, Senior Curator, ICA Boston
2008 | Red, University Place Gallery, Cambridge, MA
Juried by Jane Farver, Director, MIT List Visual Arts Center
2008 | Fire, Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, MA
Curated by Pauline Lim
2007 | At Home With the Arts Annual Exhibition, Boston, MA
Honorable mention: The Green Dress
2006 | New Members Show, Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2002 | Plateaus and Totems, Lexington Armory, Lexington, MA
1998, 1997 | SOWA Open Studios, Boston, MA
1995 | Emerging Artists Show, Viridian Artists, New York, NY
Juried by Lisa Dennison, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1993 | Inversions, Gallery at the Piano Factory, Boston, MA
GRANTS & AWARDS
Boston Redevelopment Authority Artist Certification, 2002, 2008, 2026
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Cambridge Art Association, 2007–2009
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS & PRESS
2026 | Wildscape Literary Journal, forthcoming April 2026
2007 | Online review Cambridge, MA, 13 Paintings exhibition
1993 | Bay Windows Magazine, review of Inversions exhibition