Maureen Nathan:
The Quiet Archaeology of Everyday Things
@maureen_a_nathan | www.maureennathan.com
Author: Anna Ponomarenko
Date: July 03, 2026
Curated Artist Spotlight
The Memory Objects Carry
There is something immediately recognisable about Maureen Nathan’s prints. Shoes, vessels and fragments of textiles – objects so ordinary that they almost disappear from daily attention. Yet in her work they become unexpectedly monumental.
Based in London, Maureen works across printmaking, drawing and paper sculpture, but regardless of medium her practice returns to the same question: how ordinary objects become evidence that someone has lived.
Rather than depicting people directly, she traces their presence through what remains after they have gone. A worn slipper. An empty vessel. A folded piece of cloth. These are not portraits, yet each quietly suggests a body that is no longer there.
Her work invites us to look differently at the objects we use every day – not simply as functional things, but as silent witnesses to human experience.
Between Archaeology and Memory
Maureen’s work is rooted in continuity.
The vessels, garments and everyday objects that enter her studio belong to different places and periods, yet they speak a common language. The gestures they represent – carrying, storing, wearing, holding – have remained remarkably consistent throughout history.
Rather than reconstructing the past, Maureen explores the fragments through which history survives.
Household objects become archaeological traces of ordinary lives, carrying emotional weight precisely because their stories remain incomplete.
The viewer is invited to imagine not only the object itself, but the absent person who once held it.
The Language of Printmaking
Maureen’s process reflects this relationship between memory and reconstruction.
Working with recycled Tetrapak cartons, plexiglass offcuts, aluminium and other reclaimed materials, she scratches, cuts and builds printing plates by hand before passing them repeatedly through a traditional press. Each layer subtly transforms the previous one, balancing intention with chance.
Most of her works are unique monoprints rather than editions.
Her restrained palette of ochres, muted reds, olive greens and charcoal greys evokes weathered textiles and archaeological fragments. The prints feel less invented than uncovered, as though they have quietly surfaced from another time.
Stanza: Variations on Presence
Her recent Stanza series brings these ideas into particularly clear focus.
Across the sequence, the same slipper-like forms reappear, yet no two prints are identical. Patterns shift. Colours migrate. Some forms dissolve into faint graphite silhouettes, while others become dense with stripes, grids or delicate floral ornament.
The repetition recalls variations within music or poetry, where meaning develops through rhythm rather than narrative.
The empty slippers suggest intimacy without describing a specific person. They speak simultaneously of absence, routine, ageing and memory. Like verses within a poem, each print expands the emotional possibilities of the same familiar motif.
By refusing dramatic imagery, Maureen allows subtle differences to become significant. A change of colour, a missing pattern or a faint printed trace begins to feel like the passing of time itself.
Sustainability as Method
Although Maureen’s practice is deeply sustainable, sustainability is never presented as the subject of the work.
She creates printing plates from recycled household packaging, works with reclaimed materials, non-toxic inks and paper rescued from print studios. These choices reflect the same philosophy found throughout her imagery: objects that have completed one life are allowed another.
Drawing, Teaching and Community
Alongside her studio practice, Maureen has spent many years working as an educator and mentor, leading drawing and printmaking workshops while supporting community art programmes across London.
She is a member of the Printmakers Council, Southbank Printmakers, IAPMA and Zea Mays Print Studio, and has completed artist residencies in Ireland, Spain and the United States. Recent exhibitions include the Royal West of England Academy, Woolwich Contemporary Art Fair, The Art Workers Guild and the Hogarth Prize.
The Ordinary Remembered
Maureen Nathan’s work asks us to slow down enough to notice the emotional lives of ordinary things.
The objects she prints are neither precious nor rare. They belong to kitchens, cupboards and wardrobes. Yet through repetition, careful composition and the tactile language of printmaking they become quiet witnesses to a shared human experience.
In Maureen’s hands, still life becomes something much closer to portraiture.
Not portraits of individuals, but of humanity itself – told through the objects that outlive us, carry our habits and quietly preserve the memory of everyday life.