Madeline Rupard

“I grew up moving frequently around different parts of the U.S. and traveling across long distances. Looking at the American landscape, often quickly and through the backseat window of a car, became a tool of understanding the world since I was a child. This sense of transient observation is present in my work; my paintings are journalistic and have a snapshot quality of subjects that I encounter and places that I move through in my daily life in New York. Armed simply with my iPhone camera, I quietly take photos in public areas ranging from museums to parks to grocery stores. Back in the studio, I carefully select those photos whose lighting, composition, and characters particularly strike me for painting reference. The transformation in the studio from photo to painting becomes a very thorough and egalitarian way of studying the image. By slowly breaking it down into formal elements by hand, the everyday subject such as a store can slip out of its practical meaning as a place to shop and be contemplated purely for its visual phenomena. My marks reveal a history of liquid movement on the surface, betrayed by the lines of bristles and texture of marks. Rich colors, loose painterly brushstrokes, and an approach that aims to paint the air around objects, is how I try to make sense of a space in its dimension, floors, ceilings, and skies. My work is about sentience, wakefulness, presentness, and grace. In other words, my paintings are about looking at things.”

Madeline Rupard is a visual artist who was born in Utah and raised in Maryland. She received her BFA degree in Studio Arts from Brigham Young University and is completing her MFA thesis in Painting at Pratt Institute this spring. Her work is diaristic and investigates sentience and the possibility of both time and narrative in the still image. She does not believe the world looks like photographs; that is only one way of seeing the world. One of her greatest joys in life is driving a car down the highway.