Maggie Capettini is a visual artist and a poet. Her primary bodies of artwork include representational paintings of the natural world, abstract paintings exploring emotion and memory, nature-inspired ceramic sculptures, and a multi-media series exploring her experience living with a chronic illness.
Maggie is the recipient of various awards and grants, including a 2025 Creative Accelerator Fund Award and several Individual Artist Support grants from the Illinois Arts Council, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Grant. She was a 2022 featured artist with Rendezvous Arts and was the 2016 Artist-in-Residence and 2019 Co-Curator for Warrenville Historical Society’s Albright-Inspired AIR Program.
Much of Maggie's representational work is painted outdoors, a first-hand sensory experience that influences both her art and her writing. She also creates in her home studio in Downers Grove and as a Resident Artist at Water Street Studios in Batavia.
Maggie received a BA in Studio Art from Augustana College (Illinois) and an MAT from Dominican University. Her artworks are held in private collections internationally, as well as in the public collections of several Illinois institutions and in the City of Taufkirchen (Vils), Germany. A giant duck she painted with a Tuscan landscape lives at the Media Center of Lockport Township High School East Campus. Maggie’s poem “Dad’s AM Radio” is included in the forthcoming poetry anthology The Songs of Summer: Poems About Baseball (Water’s Edge Press, 2025).
Statement
My artmaking as a process and as a body of work transcends categorization. I create based on where inspiration leads me.
Oil paint is my primary medium. The paint itself is an essential part of the paintings I make, both for my experience in the moment of creation and for what oil paint can do. With oil paint, I can lay down thick paint with a knife for instant texture, or I can slowly build up layers over time. I can apply paint with brushes, knives, my (gloved) hands, or draw with oil sticks and oil crayons. I can push paint around for days before it dries. I can remove dried paint, revealing layers between. I’ve tried other painting mediums. Oil paint is fundamental to my process.
I love to paint landscapes outdoors and to paint flowers from life - to have an intimate relationship with nature. It is a spiritual experience, to study nature so closely. Magical things happen when you stand alone and silent in the middle of nature – you witness things you might otherwise not notice. My paintings are documents of these experiences.
Inspiration also prompts me to explore color relationships and movement in non-objective painting, making many-layered paintings of rich depth that explore the process of releasing oneself from past and future influences over which one has no control.
Ceramic sculpture is my secondary medium. My hand-built ceramic sculptures echo the flowing and curvaceous forms found in nature. I work with intention: I shape the clay against my hands and with a paintbrush to develop organic sculptures. I also stay flexible as each piece evolves, intuitively responding to the way the clay seems to want to “be.” I choose my glazing to play with the visual difference between the inside and the outside of a form.
I have started experimenting with printmaking, specifically monoprinting. This is a dangerous medium for me because it is all-consuming – hours pass in the blink of an eye. I look up and it is dark outside. I get immersed in the investigational nature of “what would happen if I…” and the way pulling one print leads to ideas for the next print.
My inner journey as the sufferer of a chronic illness has influenced me to expand to other mediums. In processing my diagnosis and the challenges of navigating care for a rare genetic condition, I am creating a series that includes printmaking, fiber art, sculpture, photography, and multi-media works.
Being open to all of these inspirations allows me the privilege of regularly experiencing “that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”
©2026 maggie capettini