About MOT Studios

MOT Studios is the sometimes surreal and "elegantly demented" artwork of Maria Oliva Tyra.

At four Maria told her parents that she was gong to be an artist when she grew up. She spent most of her youth creating and drawing. When she packed up and headed off to college she fully intended to realize that four year old’s dream. Life, however, happens while you’re making plans and the line from there to here was not a direct path. 

Maria received an AA in illustration and an AA in advertising design form Oakland Community College but plans to move on to art school were derailed by marriage and motherhood. Divorce ushered in a whole new era. Maria earned a BS in Elementary Education at Oakland University and, timing being everything, found herself promptly unemployed. So after a 13 year hiatus from art of any kind she turned back to her first love.....art. She finally feels like she’s come home. 

Maria draws purely from the subconscious. Guided by the muse, the art comes from the depths of her psyche and, as she says... “I’m too afraid to go poking around in there with a sharp stick, er...pencil!”  so it just seems safer to just let it spill out onto paper as it sees fit. Currently what’s spilling out is circles. All manner of circles...gears, wheels, buttons, rings and springs.....metal things sometimes wrapped in living biology. A juxtaposition of nature’s creations with humanity’s creations. The artwork that results are surreal still lifes with a steampunk influence which have been occasionally & aptly  described as “elegantly demented.”