Brooklyn-based artist Madeline Donahue utilizes personal experience to portray the wide-ranging facets of motherhood. She draws from contrasting moments of joy, absurdity, intimacy, and anxiety to illustrate the complex relationship between mother and child. Through her oil paintings and colored pencil drawings on paper, Donahue employs humor to express universal physical and emotional experiences that accompany caring for another human. Her work highlights the invisible labor of parenting, especially as it relates to women. Though light hearted in approach, Donahue’s exhibition speaks to sacrifices made for the ultimate joys of motherhood. Feelings of ecstasy and strain exist in tandem to maintain a deeply relatable expression of intimacy. Madeline Donahue was born in Houston, Texas, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a BFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Boston and an MFA from Brooklyn College, New York. Donahue has presented solo exhibitions at Hesse Flatow, New York; Nina Johnson Gallery, Miami; Praise Shadows Gallery, Boston; and Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York. Donahue’s work has been reviewed in The Cut, The Guardian, Hyperallergic, and Elephant Magazine. Her work is in the collections of The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
[excerpted from Very Small Fires website: www.vsf.la]