January 2002

K. C. Madsen - EAST RIVER SERIES

K.C.Madsen will greet Broderick Gallery guests and discuss her work at the First Thursday Artist Reception on Thursday,  January 3rd,  2002 from 6 - 9 p.m.

East River #8

42" x 60" x 4"


" If the doors of perception were cleansed,
   everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
   WILLIAM BLAKE

Seemingly random juxtapositions of color, texture, movement, space, and structure convey to me Blake`s view of the nature of being and experience. My work is a reflection of how I see the world before any conscious attempt to order it.
A fleeting visual reference, a uniquely weathered surface, or even an odd scrap of conversation could spark an initial direction or suggest a color palette. Yet the process of creating each piece is entirely intuitive to the point that, after the fact, I donšt often recall how it happened ­ just as when one cannot remember the twists, turns, and intersections that were most certainly part of the drive home.
As a child of the sixties, deeply influenced by mid-twentieth century art, I developed the modernist sensibility that has always informed what I do. In this current body of work I am taking "action painting" in a new direction, allowing the activated surface to break free from the bounds of the flat rectangle while resulting in works that are still primarily paintings as opposed to objects, installations, or sculptural pieces. As I look at these works I have the sense that I have created something that is both rigid and in motion, that I`ve captured something in flight.
By taking a purely intellectual or philosophical approach to the activity of painting, I am able to explore the physical properties of media in the absence of any contemporary cultural noise. However I do not entirely reject the narrative or symbolic. I just ask the viewer to find meaning as I have, not in socio-political commentary, irony, or romanticism, but in transcendence, in the infinite.

K. C. Madsen
January 2002

East River #3

-detail-

more work by K.C.Madsen, including others from the East River series