Madeline Ludwig-Leone

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Artist statement

Painting is so often a reflection of desire, and what is excluded from a scene often reveals as much as what is included. Madeline Ludwig-Leone’s work investigates the complicated relationships between humans and their natural environments, and how systems of representation, such as Western landscape and still life painting traditions, present a view of nature that is mediated, filtered, and controlled by cultural bias. The simplified and flattened spaces in the paintings serve as a counterpoint to the scenes of lush botany or rugged sublime vistas so often seen in Western landscape painting. Fragments of nature do appear, but they are often mediated, seen through windows or in reflections and shadows. These indications of a larger, unseen natural world are posed like props in ambiguous interior spaces, hinting at the staged quality of the scene. Works by the Hudson River School painters appear in miniaturized glimpses as reproductions in the pages of a book. The sharp contrast between these idealized manifestations of desire and the spare interior spaces in which they manifest poses a question as to the motivation behind the iconography of the past. Shadows are prominent in many of the works, implying a solid form that is often unseen or out of view but asserting themselves as flat, graphic shapes. These silhouettes are also transient and ephemeral - a moment captured before the light changes. Although the scenes contain a conspicuous lack of living things, the quality of...

Artwork