Remembering Denver Artist Markham Maes, aka Shitty Kitten

Denver artist Markham Maes, a prolific muralist and designer who also created under the name Shitty Kitten, died December 12 of undisclosed causes. He was 44.

"Rest in paint" is the phrase that Maes's friends, colleagues and family members have been posting online to mark his death. For over twenty years, Maes's bright, whimsical imagery has been highly visible in the local arts scene and across the city. In addition to creating his own work, he was a curator and mentor to many up-and-coming artists.
A Colorado native, Maes grew up in Commerce City. He drew obsessively from an early age, and after high school he started exhibiting his paintings at bars and coffee shops such as Tarantula Billiards in Denver and the late Penny Lane in Boulder. His style was steeped in the graffiti and street-art traditions, but it was equally inspired by Walt Disney and Jim Henson — fantasy and grit rolled into one, along with a deep reverence for his Mexican-American heritage.

"He loved to do murals in places where he used to hang out when he was young," says Shantell Allen, Maes's wife and the mother of their four children. "We used to take the bus to the Eastside, before it got gentrified. Where Denver Central Market is, that's where his friend's dad once had a junkyard. So when he got asked to paint a mural behind Central Market, it was a big deal to him. He was, like, 'I used to run these streets, and now I'm getting respect.'

"Everyone was, like, 'Oh, he does graffiti,'" Allen adds. "But he really didn't. It's more than that. It's acrylics. It's characters. And he had a great sense of humor. There was this thing he did called Art or Die Kidz Club. It was for grownups, though. You could subscribe to the Kidz Club, and every month he would send you stuff, like what you used to get in cereal boxes. He would make little toys and trinkets and even plushies that he would sew himself. He definitely always loved learning and working in different mediums."
Maes gained more traction in the Denver scene when he began working with IndyInk printshop — and later, IndyInk's retail spinoff, Abstract — in the early 2000s.

"When we opened our first store on South Broadway, Markham was one of the first people to come in and help us out," says IndyInk and Abstract co-founder Aaron Cohrs. "He would put together art shows there, and he would give us T-shirt designs. Back then, we had to help each other out to make anything. None of us had any money, and there weren't a lot of opportunities, so it was a real do-it-yourself scene. He was super down-to-earth and friendly and inclusive. I mean, artists generally have to have an ego to get people interested in their stuff, if that makes sense. But he was able to have that and still get past it, like, 'We're all equals, and we're all in this together.'

"What struck me about him first, though, was his artwork," Cohrs adds. "It was really original, and the skill level was really deep. Markham was good at creating worlds."
Maes's commissions over the years ranged from designing a room at the Queen Anne Bed & Breakfast on Tremont Street to re-creating the cover of his favorite children's book, In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak, for Uncovered, a group show sponsored by the Denver Public Library.

"Markham was the king of imagination," says Roswell, a local event promoter who curated Uncovered. "It was the first show I did with him. Even before I knew the man, I knew his characters. Big, fuzzy, horned beasts and doe-eyed women you were sure had a knife behind their back. Smiling demons and giant skulls that erupted with color. He was a candle that burned at both ends, and he always had twenty ideas brewing. His art shows were always an amazing ballet of organized chaos. He was part Picasso, part Willy Wonka."

"He was very uplifting in a lot of ways," says artist Chelsea Lewinski, who met Maes in 2019 before becoming a close friend and collaborator. "I was just an emerging artist when we met, and he was one of the first people to encourage me and tell me how incredible my art was. The collaboration we did that I love most is a mural at Denver Central Market. We decided to paint the paleta man. At the time, paleta men were getting jumped and beaten, and they're a very big part of our culture. So we wanted to honor the paleta man who walks around the neighborhood. We painted an older Mexican man who represented the paleta man, and then Markham painted cartoon popsicles all around him."
Lewinski continues, "Everything he painted was just so fun and childlike. His art reminds me of my childhood. It reminds me of being Mexican, our culture. But I also know his art was inspired by his family. A lot of the characters that he drew were his kids. You can look back at any of his art and see that there's always an ode to his children. He will paint their initials. He will paint their faces. They're always there."

Allen, who began dating Maes when they were both sixteen, was also one of his familial muses. "He would always paint lots of women," she recalls, "and when I asked him about that, he was like, 'All my women are based on you. I just change up the colors and stuff.' He did everything for his family. Anytime we needed cards for baby shower invitations or the kids' birthdays, he would hand-make them. He always wanted things to be personal and thoughtful."

Ruben "RubeZilla" Cabrera is another one of the many younger artists that Maes brought into his extended family. "I was nobody on the street scene when I met Markham," he remembers. "I was just coming up, trying to get my name out there. He created a space for me. If there was room on a wall, we would definitely pull up on each other and find a way to collaborate. Even up until his last days alive, he was an extraordinary artist, but he was also an extraordinary father and husband. Everything was family to him, including other artists.

"What I respected most about Markham as an artist was his freeness, his freedom," Cabrera adds. "He created without boundaries. He was this mustached, macho, tattooed man who painted these airy fairies and named himself Shitty Kitten. You can't not give a fuck more than that. He was like, 'I'm gonna do me the way I'm gonna do me.' That just embodies everything that street art and Denver culture are about. That's Shitty Kitten to me."

A celebration of Markham Maes's art and life will be held Saturday, January 11, at Green Spaces Marketplace, 2590 Walnut Street, from 5 to 9 p.m. To learn more, visit Maes's GoFundMe memorial page.