Art in America spoke with painter Madeline Peckenpaugh, who explains how she creates her beguiling paintings and emphasizes the importance of staying spontaneous.
“I mostly draw imagery from everyday experiences: memories, places I’ve lived, things I see on walks,” Peckenpaugh explained during the recent studio visit. “Sometimes, I’ll see something I liked in one painting, and then I’ll try it again in the next one.”
AiA visited Peckenpaugh’s studio for our New Talent issue. She is one of five New York–based artists to watch featured in our new studio visit video series.
Read an edited version of their conversation here: https://bit.ly/3W7OfJE
Art in America: https://www.artnews.com/c/art-in-america/
Credits:
Featuring Madeline Peckenpaugh
Special Thanks to Alexander Berggruen Gallery
Director: Christopher Garcia Valle
DP: Jasdeep Kang
Producer: Christopher Garcia Valle
Editor: Christopher Garcia Valle
Interviewer: Emily Watlington
Foreign queens and I’m a painter I usually am working on at least four to five paintings at a time I think it’s helpful to kind of bounce around and take things from other paintings it depends on really the painting how long it takes some of them can be a one day painting
And I feel like those are usually the most successful to me I got the full idea out to go back in and fix something or you know do anything that feels like it’s on the verge of Designing too much yeah I feel like I think about a lot how the painting can
Just remain in that stage and it’s enough I start with brighter more saturated colors because I know that it will stain the canvas in a nicer way than let’s say Earth colors so that’s usually what I’m thinking about once I have that palette made then I have another palette which
Will be on top so it’s like this interaction between usually like Earth Tones and bright saturated colors I also take a lot of photographs and um they’re usually they look kind of like small paintings or like what I would put into a painting and I I Loosely use them
I’d say I think that you know they’re from my everyday something I walk past and you know I can only see a picture if I happen to be in that one spot because all the elements kind of work as they are and it’s like that spontaneity that I’m always looking
For it means I want to feel the my body’s connection to the painting um how big things are how far away the Horizon is um how easy is it to get back to the Horizon you know like I kind of like putting up obstacles ranging arranging a space in a way
Personally the biggest part of making opinion is the experience for me and hopefully the experience for the viewer you know like I hope I conveyed something through my experience for somebody else my parents are painters too and my dad’s a landscape themer um my mom’s abstract painter so it’s right in the middle
Video Artist Madeline Peckenpaugh On How She Turns Everyday Experiences into “Spontaneous” Paintings was uploaded on 06/14/2023 by Art in America Youtube channel.