Creating Your Own Puzzle: An Interview with Artist Meredith Maher

There is a particular kind of restlessness that arrives when an idea feels both inevitable and impossible at the same time. A moment when curiosity turns inward and asks a simple but unsettling question: Why doesn’t this exist? For Meredith Maher, that question was not rhetorical. It lingered, persisted, and sought an answer.

Maher had long held an admiration for art, but admiration alone did not compel her to act. That changed after a dream in which she found herself standing before a work of art, reading as an image from afar. As she moved closer, the image revealed itself to be entirely composed of puzzle pieces. The moment stayed with her, and the question soon followed. Had this already been done?  She searched for something that resembled what she had seen in her dream, believing that discovering even a trace of it would quiet her curiosity. Instead, there was nothing to be found. No precedent. No example. Just absence.

That absence became the catalyst. An inner dialogue emerged, quiet at first, then increasingly insistent. If the work did not exist, and if she did not attempt to make it, then she would never see it. Believing something should exist was no longer enough. The question shifted from has this been done to something far more daunting: could it be done at all?

From Curiosity to Construction

Maher’s response was not immediate mastery, but a period of exploration driven by curiosity. She began collecting puzzle pieces from thrift stores with the same intention a painter selects pigments, choosing pieces for their color, tone, and how they might function within a larger image. Her earliest exploration resulted in a work titled Garden of Reason, an abstract garden composed of layered fragments and bursts of color that served as a testing ground for what might be possible.

The success of abstraction led to a far more intimidating question. Could this same process be pushed further? Could she use puzzle pieces alone to construct a portrait, one capable of holding likeness, depth, and emotion? The challenge felt overwhelming, but Maher remained determined. In her mind echoed a simple refrain: It can be done. I know it can be done.

After months of trial, error, and persistence, the answer revealed itself. What began as imagination became method. Today, Maher intricately assembles portraits and scenes by gluing curated puzzle pieces onto canvas, often sourcing vintage puzzles, allowing traces of their past use to subtly shape the finished work. Each piece requires an average of four months of daily labor, while larger and more detailed works can take more than a year to complete.

Within these compositions, the puzzle pieces take on a life beyond their original purpose. They become a way of organizing experience, of making sense of fragments that might otherwise remain scattered. Maher’s work sits within a broader lineage of female artists redefining material, process, and authorship through deeply personal forms of making, while remaining distinctly her own in both discipline and intent.

Memory, Process and Meaning

Artist Replete: Using puzzle pieces, do you feel your artwork takes on a greater meaning?

Meredith Maher: One of my earliest pieces was titled Memory Addict. The idea was that as you go through life, you accumulate all these memories. But those memories exist only as your own personal experience. There is no universal truth to what the past is. We are always reconstructing the past in the present moment through all of these experiences. Each time we look back, we are creating a new memory.

Artist Replete: So could each puzzle piece represent a memory?

Meredith Maher: I like to think of the puzzle pieces as either an idealized future or a reconstructed memory.