About Maury
Maury, the youngest of four children of Harry and Ruth Ornest, was born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1960. Two years after his birth the family moved to Los Angeles.
He and Harry shared a love of baseball, and Harry drilled Maury and his brother Mike for hours on end on how to field, bunt, steal bases and execute a double play. As a switch hitter, Maury became a star player and was the 76th pick in the professional baseball draft. He attended college and then played minor league baseball until injuries ended his career.
At 23, Maury began working in the business office of his father, who had recently purchased the St. Louis Blues hockey team and the arena where it played. He loved working in the family business, but over time things started to change.
Over the next few years, Maury began to experience the world as a hostile place. He suffered breaks from reality, and his life changed almost overnight. His supportive family searched desperately for effective treatments.
Maury never set out to be an artist. As a young man—and later as a professional baseball player—art wasn’t even on his radar. But in his early 30s, everything shifted. His therapist suggested he start painting to express himself. Though initially he took some classes, Maury was, in essence self-taught. Over the years he learned by doing—by filling thousands of sketchbook pages, by experimenting, by letting instinct guide him. He went on to share this discovery with his mother, an avid art collector.
After he died, we found 1400 paintings in his home studio and storage units.
His pieces reveal not only an ever-deepening understanding of art history but also an urgent need to create, to explore, to communicate. What started as therapy became his passion—one that, for the last three decades of his life, illuminated who he was and how profoundly he saw the world.
In his 50s Maury developed heart disease yet persisted bravely through physical suffering until the age of 58 when he passed away.
Despite the isolation and suffering he endured, Maury was an eternal optimist who always yearned to get back to the canvas. His optimism is evident in the joyous nature, wit and vibrant colors of his paintings. For information, contact Laura Ornest at lornest@gmail.com.
