Precocious child. hi-tech exec. fine artist and world traveler. Tina Mayland’s life has run the gamut, from early days running free on a family farm on Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina, to a career as a marketing VP for AT&T, and she has now come full circle back to the things she loves best. After 30 years in corporate America, she picked up a brush and returned to painting, both in and around the Lowcountry, and wherever on the planet her travels take her. A prolific artist and well-heeled traveler, the 10th-generaton Charlestonian has reimagined her life through what she calls her encore career.
“I always loved art—to draw and to paint,” says Mayland. “I particularly liked sculpture. When you’re really little, you come to realize some things are not what you think they are; I was 6. I discovered that when you really look at something, study it, you learn so much more about it.”
Her grandparents’ farm, on the rural sea island of Wadmalaw just outside of Charleston, was what opened her eyes to the beauty and workings of the natural world. “As a child, I built tree forts in live oak trees, played in the pluff mud of the marshes and galloped my horse through Lowcountry forests,” Mayland recalls. “I was always outside, taking in everything around me—how the light filters through the moss, the dust rising from a dirt road. I began sculpting; I liked the tactile nature of it, working the clay. As a child, I was lucky enough to take sculpting lessons from the renowned South Carolina sculptor Willard Hirsch.”
Mayland pursued art throughout high school and in college explored an affinity for writing, which she parlayed into journalism studies. She received her bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Georgia and went on to pursue a career in high technology, beginning with a stint in satellite communications at Scientific-Atlanta. Over the course of her three-decade career, which took her from Atlanta to Washington, D.C., and New Jersey, she completed studies for an advanced degree through an executive MBA program at Emory University. Throughout that time, Mayland’s artistic sensibilities remained strong, as did her love for her sea island home.
“My heart belongs to the South Carolina Lowcountry,” muses Mayland. “I relish its languid summer days, its moss-covered oak trees that glow orange in the receding light, stunning sunsets and the vastness of marshes punctuated by the distinctive odor of pluff mud—which, to me, is the scent of the place I call home.”
In 2006, she left the corporate world and returned to Charleston to dive back into painting full time. “Three weeks later, I ‘went to work,’ channeling my workaholic nature into becoming a professional artist,” she recalls with a smile. In just three years, she’d garnered representation in her first gallery.
The Lowcountry’s lush maritime forests and marshscapes became Mayland’s primary focus— immersing herself in the elements of the natural world that brought her wonder and insight as a child.
“In my art, I strive to capture a moment in time, an experience that has moved me,” she explains. “Often, it’s how the light played on the landscape and how it made me feel in that instant. Capturing the essence of those landscapes is also a way of recapturing the joys of my youth.”
In a process reminiscent of her early foray into sculpting, Mayland uses thick paint and bold strokes, building layers of color to produce her vision of a composition in the impressionistic style. She says she primarily paints with oils, and that she loves the tactile nature of pastels.
Mayland’s evocative portfolio showcases several collections, including a Petite Painting series, featuring portraits of sea turtles and other wildlife; Lowcountry landscapes; still lifes; portraits; Augusta National paintings; and abstracts, a new exploration for the artist.
The artist’s website also showcases a Thoughts About Art section, where Mayland has enshrined her favorite quotations by the likes of Picasso, Degas and Cézanne. “I get inspired by words, as well as by art,” she explains. “To explore a thought or feeling and put it into words is exciting as well. That’s my journalism background coming through.”
Mayland is passionate about travel, regularly embarking on sojourns all over the world, exploring diverse cultures and expanding both her perspective and craft by availing herself of international painting workshops.
A teacher herself, Mayland has been the exclusive host of past workshops titled Professional Oil Painting Lessons for Kiawah Island Golf Resorts. “The classes were en plein air in a great venue overlooking marshlands,” she says. “I set up the easels for the students and taught them composition, how to mix paint. At the end of the day, a beginner had a piece of art they could frame.”
Mayland is active in the community, having served on the board of trustees of the Middleton Place Foundation and on the national board of directors of the Archeological Institute of America. Her work is represented by the Wells Gallery at The Sanctuary on Kiawah Island and the Lowcountry Artists Gallery in Downtown Charleston. She also was a member and on the board of directors of the Charleston Artist Guild for four years. She’s been a member of the Seabrook Island Artist Guild for 18 years and currently serves as vice president.
“The guild does a workshop every month. My responsibility is to bring artists from all over the country—mostly from the Southeast,” she explains. “We collaborate; I set up their workshops according to their style and media and sign up 15 students for them. I recently had an artisan teach a sweetgrass weaving workshop. It’s a lot of work, but it really gets my juices flowing. I’m passionate about the workshops, and I always take away something from each one. I’m always on the hunt for the next thing. I enjoy reinventing myself.” *
Wendy Swat Snyder is a Charleston-based freelance writer (sweetgrassandgrits.com).
