April 7 – 13
Reception: Thursday, April 10, 5-8pm
Location: Art Lofts Gallery, 111 N Frances St, Madison, WI
My oil paintings exist in a fluid space between illustration and phantasm, the tangible and the imagined. These works challenge linear or singular narratives, offering instead a sense of fragmented storytelling. A shortened depth of space, vantage points, and color palette mimic the atmosphere of theater and film. The resulting layered viewing experience excavates humor, pleasure, fear, and human connection in a personal, storytelling manner. Through the creation of individual living folklore, my inner world surfaces. Undercurrents of body politics, ecological collapse, and social dynamics are woven throughout the work.
An uneasy intimacy marks the interactions between my figures and an autonomous and self-aware ecosystem. My characters embody a quiet, almost lethargic contemplation that disrupts any sense of urgency or action. This creates an eeriness in the paintings as the entanglements between the figures and their environment are always in flux, always on the verge of tipping into something either tender or brutal. The works reflect how systems of memory—whether in the body, the environment, or society—can perpetuate suffering or nurture empathy. Jewel tones and rust-colored gloaming atmospheres form backdrop vignettes creating a sensibility both uncanny and familiar. The overarching theatricality of these scenes suggest a world that is simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, constituting a parallel universe where the mundane holds a compellingly mysterious meaning.
I imagine a fictional Midwest with the space to explore both scientific and emotional anxieties. Characters hold the ecological and social realities of the landscape, while fiction allows for alternate realities and new ways of moving and feeling; embracing the ambiguity and complexity of human experience in the tension between what is known and what is unknown. I am inspired by the inexplicable, and how encountering the unknown challenges insular thinking. There is a poetics to world-building and the process of carving out space for thought, for being, for feeling. These qualities of our humanness are reflected back to us in depictions of the anxious and the brutal, yet also in the moments of awe and profound interconnectedness.
The Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibitions season continues with Mallory Stowe’s exhibit Both the Spine and the Underbelly. The MFA Thesis Exhibitions mark the culmination of a three-year degree program that emphasizes development of a rigorous studio art practice under the supervision of a faculty guidance committee. Exploring an interdisciplinary approach to art making, as well as coursework in art history and related fields, artists cultivate professional practices that facilitate a sustainable career in the arts. Join us in celebrating our Class of 2025 UW-Madison Graduate professionals!