Painting

Item Description

Bubble, 2021, oil on canvas, 31 in x 22.25 in

When painting Bubble (2021), I was interested in creating a contemporary allegorical response to Édouard Manet’s Boy Blowing Bubbles (1867) and Jean Siméon Chardin's Soap Bubbles (1733–34). As I was painting it, what excited/surprised me most was the conversation that my figurative painting was having with abstraction. Through the use of distortion and magnification, Bubble (2021) starts to become a painting within a painting.

The exaggerated bubble in this work helped to inspire the bubble and balloon like objects in my current series The World Made Strange (2022-), currently on view at the OAG in the exhibition Le rendu: Art from the University of Ottawa Department of Visual Arts 2022.

Bubble, 2021, huile sur toile, 31 po x 22,25 po

Avec Bubble [Bulle] (2021), j’ai voulu créer une réponse allégorique contemporaine aux Bulles de savon (1867) d’Édouard Manet et à l’œuvre du même nom de Jean Siméon Chardin (1733-34). Le plus étonnant et excitant, alors que je peignais cette œuvre, a été de voir la conversation que ma peinture figurative entretenait avec l’abstraction. Grâce à l’utilisation de la distorsion et de l’agrandissement, Bubble [Bulle] (2021) commence à devenir une peinture dans une peinture.

La grande bulle démesurée dans cette œuvre a inspiré les objets ressemblant à des bulles et des ballons de ma série actuelle The World Made Strange (2022-), actuellement présentée à la GAO dans le cadre de l’exposition Le rendu. Œuvres de 2022 du Département d’arts visuels de l’Université d’Ottawa.

Credit for Photo of Artwork/Crédit pour la photo de l'œuvre: Richard-Max Tremblay

Item Special Note

Artist Website/Site Web de l'artiste: http://madelinerichards.com

Instagram: @mrichards_art

Madeline Richards is a figurative painter and a recent graduate from the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Ottawa. Through paint, she explores memory as a recollection and as a sensation in the body. Her paintings reveal a sense, both familiar and strange, that comes from the remaking and transforming of memory.

She is the first recipient of the 13th Street Winery Expression Award, a new MFA award offered by the 13th Street Winery in collaboration with the Ottawa Art Gallery. During her MFA studies, she was the 2022 recipient of the Penny Cousineau-Levine Prize for outstanding thesis support paper, as well as a recipient of the Stonecroft bursary to attend the Venice Biennale field course. In 2022, Richards’ work was selected for the exhibition FLESH: Embodying Praxis, as part of the The University of British Colombia’s graduate symposium, which took place at the Audain Art Centre. Richards’ work is currently on view at the OAG alongside her recently graduated MFA cohort in Le rendu: Art from the University of Ottawa Department of Visual Arts 2022.

Madeline Richards a récemment décroché sa maîtrise en arts visuels de l’Université d’Ottawa. Par la peinture, elle s’intéresse à la mémoire comme source de souvenirs et sensation corporelle. Ses œuvres dégagent une impression à la fois familière et insolite grâce à la manipulation et la transformation de la mémoire.