She, came of age in a community with some of “the most celebrated and influential artists and authors of the twentieth century.” Her father, Willliam Maxwell, was a novelist and editor at the New Yorker Magazine. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York and a former student at the John F. Kennedy School of government at Harvard, Maxwell began her career as a magazine illustrator.

Maxwell was profoundly affected by her experiences with New York’s economically disenfranchised, Black, working class, and under-resourced communities, Maxwell who chronicled their plight in her work was criticized by some critics on the basis that she was “a White woman portraying the Black experience [particularly]…at a time when the New York art scene was becoming increasingly experimental.”

However, Maxwell’s efforts were lauded by others. Satch Hoyt expressed that, “She was championing us, Black artists, back then when there was very little diversity,” Hoyt said, “when you could count the [number of] Black artists that any of those Chelsea galleries were showing.” Maxwell, was known to collaborate with artists of color. One such effort with Hoyt and other artists of color was a commemorative exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision ending desegregation in public schools.

Maxwell’s most memorable efforts include a visual and conversational art project with veterans retuning from Iraq and Afghanistan, title “coming Home: Journey, community and Dialog.” She died in 2015 of ovarian cancer.