ARTIST STATEMENT
My paintings and drawings explore the challenges as well as the optimism required to be curious about life following a life-changing medical diagnosis and difficult recovery. These works highlight the connection to the natural world and the intersection of science and magic, with nature being the intermediary running through both. If the healthiest gardens are ones filled with death, how do we apply that lesson in real time so our own life will bloom? Works include objects, totems and imagery that asks the viewer to determine the significance based on their own personal experiences. Elements of humor and abstraction speak to the surreal experience of embracing mortality with joy and wonder. Bright, highly chromatic colors reflect the buoyancy of hope and discovery. The choice in using unnaturally bright pigments and modern mediums serves as a reminder of paying homage to past lived experiences serving as inspiration, while fully existing in the present. Solidly rendered paintings and drawings further emphasize this connection to the present, with figures and imagery possessing both weight and a hefty gravitational pull. It is my hope that the viewer feels their own singular gravity and remembers to be both a good steward of the land and to each other—while we all are on this side of the earth.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Madeline Winter is a visual artist and educator from Chicago, Illinois. She received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA in Painting from Indiana University-Bloomington. Winter has shown work in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and throughout Indiana. She has held residencies in Barcelona and Chicago and was recently a resident fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). She has taught at Indiana University-Bloomington and Indiana University-Northwest.
© Madeline Winter