I had a conversation recently with a colleague about the aesthetic of loneliness. How does it look? Who paints it best? I brought up Maud Madsen, not that I find her work to be about a sadness or absence, but that I loved the ways in which she paints a character that is intent and busy with being by themself. That her work showcased a kind of loneliness that comes with action, with articulated reason, with passion. I don't find her character to be lonely, but allowing the viewer to see inside someone's own time, own space.
Dweller, her new show opening next week at Half Gallery, is a powerful new body of work that is about domestic space and private allocations of time. When we spoke to Madsen a few years ago, she told us "Whenever I imagine a painting, I try to think about how everything felt." And what I gather from her work is that these memories she portrays are indications of how time works on the mind, that she remembers the feeling of being by one's self and trying to make due and let youth present itself as it is. These feel like portraits of understanding one's space in the world, and for Madsen, her explorations feel vital to the rest of us. —Evan Pricco
