Reflections Bali Years

Years of meditation and travel have shaped Maria's art practices into a transcendent dialogue between spirit and form. From 2010 to 2022, she lived in Bali—a mystical spiritual island where realities fluidly shift and invisible worlds become visible. Bali is a place where people say realities bend, life flows without rigidity, and hidden truths become visible. Bali seeped into her art and practices, shifting her art toward fluidity and openness.

This profound immersion shifted her art into a more meditative, multidisciplinary, multimedia practice, one that contemplates the mysterious space between two thoughts.

Morphed images from Maria's photography, travels, from global sites and inner journeys, integrated with various mixed media, are collaged into asymmetrical layers playing with the ancient mandala framework, of a circle and a square.

During the Bali years, Maria restored a derelict villa into a wellness retreat, participated in the Ubud Writer's Festival Poetry Slam, showed and sold her art to private clients and in luxury resorts.

She invented art marketing strategies such as Art in the Box, in which Balinese artisans crafted treasure boxes housing her mandalas from The Art of Mobility series, which drew clients and drove art sales. Videos of Art in the Box are on www.youtube.com/mariakarki26

Art in a Box

She also led mandala art-as-meditation workshops during her months as a live-in artist in residence at a luxury wellness resort in Ubud. She wrote her first novel, Lover of Stars—a witty, saucy, and heartfelt exploration of longing for love in transient expat life, sprinkled with poetry and illustrations.

For the second time in her working life, she received recognition in Vogue, not for fashion this time, but for her wellness property, Life Retreats.

The Bali years evolved into a new chapter in 2022, when she moved back to her native Florida.

These days, Maria is painting and finishing 3 books: about her mother's experience as an immigrant to America, poetry with illustrations about the longing for love, one about the Bali years.