Through densely worked surfaces, California artist Maya Kabat builds oil paintings where abstraction and process converge. Using drywall tools, she layers slabs and ridges of pigment into rectilinear forms, each mark carrying the momentum of her hand and body. Her dynamic surfaces balance order and spontaneity, inviting viewers into a tactile, visceral encounter. Vivid colors and shifting geometries echo both landscape and the human body, while her sensitivity to pattern and structure reflects an ongoing influence from quilt making.  

Kabat earned her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from UC Davis. She was a founding member of the artist-run gallery, Mercury Twenty, in Oakland. Residencies include The London Intensive, sponsored by the Camden Arts Centre in London, the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation Artist Residency in New Berlin, New York and the Gambrell Gallery Artist Residency in Ashland, Oregon. She has exhibited at many West Coast galleries such as Vielmetter Gallery (Los Angeles) and SLATE Contemporary (Oakland).  Her work is represented in the collections of Kaiser Permanente, Cisco Systems, Stanford Hospitals, and The Neiman Marcus Collection. Select press includes a 2023 feature in 48 Hills, with additional reviews in East Bay Monthly, Art Ltd., SF Weekly, and the San Jose Mercury News. Her studios are in North Berkeley and in Oakland, California, at The Dome—workspaces established in 1976 by the artists Anne and Peter Voulkos