By University Relations
Brooklyn, New York, native Madeleine Bialke is this month’s Artist-in-Residence with the Visual Arts Program at Northwestern Oklahoma State University. Bialke will have a free artist talk and workshop to create monotype prints Wednesday, Nov. 28, from 6- 9 p.m. in Jesse Dunn Annex 324.
In conjunction with the First Friday Art Walk on Friday, Dec. 7, she will be exhibiting artwork created while at Northwestern from 3-5 p.m. in the Jesse Dunn Annex, and from 6-8 p.m. her small works will be exhibited downtown at the Graceful Arts Center.
Bialke said her upcoming workshop will involve making monotype prints where paintings will be created on plexiglass that will be transferred or pressed onto paper using the Visual Art program’s printing press.
During her talk, Bialke said she will explain how her work has progressed through her education and over time.
She said she also would be talking a little about American landscape paintings that have inspired her, especially those of artists George Catlin and Albert Bierstadt.
“As a cultural convention, landscape is used in America as an exploration of national identity,” Bialke said. “The painted landscape more often reveals the artist’s learning than it does the experiences of the natural world. My work sets an imaginary stage on which to explore the role of nature in the evolving identity of America.
As climate change and ecological devastation wreak havoc on a local and national scale, and an expanding population continues to build an urban sprawl while looking inward into screens — nature simplifies.
“I use flat, shallow spaces to discuss natural limits. The colors are derived from clothing catalogues and house paint swatches and do not reference the directly perceptual world.
Color is used to create uneasy, unsettling associations with its subjects to suggest a world changed by chemicals, pollution and integral man-made alterations to the fabric of the natural world.
The loopy, slightly humorous treatment of each scene evokes the American comic. Iconic landscape imagery, such as conifers and cumulous clouds, in this sense function as an expression of national iconology and ethos.
My representation of nature is codified in a set of mythic narratives, spatial conventions and communal symbols, removing itself from the original experienced place into cultural arenas.
During her time in Oklahoma, Bialke said she had a chance to visit a couple of the state parks in the area – the Great Salt Plains and the Little Sahara.
“What’s striking about the Oklahoma landscape is it’s very flat, and the sky seems really big,” Bialke said.
“You can see forever, so that’s been interesting so far.”
Bialke said her time as Northwestern’s Artist-in-Residence has been great because she has had time to just work on paintings and pare down her life a little.
Kyle Larson, assistant professor of art and the Artist-in-Residence program director, has had a big part in Bialke attending this residency.
“Kyle has been so supportive; it’s great to have him around as both a resource and a friend,” she said “He puts a lot work into this residency and making it happen. It’s great to have this kind of thing, both for the artists in a small town, but also to bridge cultural caps.”
Bialke earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Art in 2013 from Plattsburgh State University of New York and her
Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Boston University in 2016.
Before participating in Northwestern’s Artist-in-Residence program, Bialke said she has done three others.
She also has broadly exhibited her work in New York and Boston, as well as participated in art exhibitions in London and Portland, Maine.
To see more of her work, visit mbialke.com.