Artist Spotlight: Mia Cross
Massachusetts artist Mia Cross is keeping her practice alive as technology dominates traditional markets. While many artists struggle in today's digital age, Cross finds success through her craft.
“This is the work that feels right for me,” Cross said. Her paintings consist of abstracted portraits, landscapes and animals, combining multiple aspects of life into color-packed artworks.
Raised in Farmington Massachusetts, Cross attended Boston University and double majored in sculpture and painting. She graduated in 2014.
Unfortunately in todays digital age, those who subscribe to a traditional fine art practice face challenges. Generative AI is able to create artwork of its own from a variety of inputs. On the site HaveIBeenTrained.com, artists can check if their work appears on AI art generators. Cross said she saw her work allegedly stolen by AI. There is an option on the website to remove your work, but Cross is not convinced that it prevents the material from appearing on AI sites.
“Feels icky to know your work is being used without being compensated,” Cross said. Current legislation doesn’t prohibit such unauthorized reproductions.
However, threats of AI reproducing her work, doesn't infringe on her practice.
Traditional artists can use digital media to their advantage. Cross uses her website, email and Instagram to share her work.
"The Land Stitcher"
Her portfolio includes portraits of family, friends and hired models. She creates fantastical scenery as she paints landscapes around her subjects. In one of her paintings, “The Land Stitcher,” Cross seamlessly blends the foreground into the background. The stitched cloth recedes behind the figure into the mountainous landscape, blurring the line between object and space. Paintings, “Oui Oui I Agree” and “Paint me to Match my Grandma’s Drapes,” also follow that illusionist template. Her materials include oil and acrylic paint, colored pencils and sewn fabric.
Bold color and geometric shapes earned Cross a global following. Her artwork is in permanent museum collections around the world.
Obtained by the Danforth Museum in Farmington Massachusetts and Simmons University, Cross said “it is a lofty goal” for her to be “in context with the other work from [her] contemporaries.”
In 2019, Simmons University hosted a solo exhibition for Cross titled “The Painted Place,” curated by Helen Popinchalk, the Department Director of the Simmons Trustman Art Gallery. “I was really struck by Mia’s work,” Popinchalk said. Popinchalk met Cross in 2018 at Cross’s exhibit “Crossover.”
