about the artist
Madeline Barber is a multimedia artist primarily focused on painting and ink drawings. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, a top art school, in 2018 with a BFA in Painting and Printmaking. Since then, Madeline has illustrated three published children's books and was given the honor of becoming one of Knock Knock Children's Museum's artists in residence. Her newest endeavor is her lifestyle brand, Panic Pillow, inspired by her studio work and emotional state.
Madeline's work is inspired by Florene Stettheimer, David Hockney, and the early European Impressionists and Expressionists. She is also inspired by children's book illustrators like Oliver Jeffers, David Catrow, and Quentin Blake. Madeline's artistic goal is to become a self-sufficient artist. She hopes to bring pride to the city of Baton Rouge by showing her work in local businesses, creating murals, and bringing together a group of developing artists in the city.
artist statement
Let us not wake up to reality but fall asleep from it.
I believe my actual job as an artist is to bridge the viewer and their imagination.
Imagination is a fundamental part of the human experience. Yet, as we get older, we begin to take advantage of our imagination, daydreaming only about things within our suffocating reality. My artwork fights against this notion by welcoming the viewer in with bright colors and cartoon-like personifications, allowing the mind to wander and create a new meaning to the work. The onlooker makes the backstories; they elevate the characters.
My emotional state predominantly inspires me. Even when I wasn't paying attention, my work was always affected by what was going on in my head. In college, I created a series of self-portraits (2 a week) that began to act more like a journal than anything else. The portraits changed dramatically depending on what was happening to me outside my studio walls. I am prone to intense emotions and a quick emotional turnaround; I realized avoiding that in my artwork was impossible. Instead, I embraced my feelings and began using them to guide my work.
My series, "Conversations," is a group of portraits created to represent conversations I have had with myself or others, mainly reflecting fears in my life. I don't expect the same emotion to resonate in the audience. I hope they experience something completely different when interacting with my work. The childlike innocence of this series cuts to the core of us as humans and evokes more primitive emotions. By inspiring these emotions, I hope viewers can think with more elementary reasoning and open themselves up to the imaginations they have misused for so long.