Artist's Bio

Maia Chavez Larkin is an illustrator and journalist. Daughter of oil painter Eva Van Rijn and the late WPA muralist and National Academy of Design member Edward Arcenio Chavez, Maia hails from a creative and peripatetic family. Born and raised among artists, she was initially trained in architectural illustration at the New York School of Interior Design, and went on to study painting and drawing at Il Chiostro in Italy. Her classical pen and ink work has shown at the Kiesendahl + Calhoun Contemporary Art Gallery in Beacon, NY, the Fletcher Gallery in Woodstock, NY and the Broome Street Gallery in Manhattan, among others. As a commercial illustrator, she has worked for the Beaver Creek Resort Company, the Seven Lakes Lodge and the Adoption Exchange, as well as various periodicals. In 2006, she collaborated with Nickelodeon’s Funniest Mom in America Rubi Nicholas on the children’s book My Mom’s Not Cool. Larkin and her husband, a fellow journalist, live in Denver, CO and recently brought home their daughter, Flynn QiuQiu, from China.