DEVON + DARTMOOR - Madolin Maxey
March 1 – 30, 2012
URI Feinstein Providence Campus Gallery
80 Washington St, Providence, RI 02903
The recent Madolin Maxey paintings at the URI Feinstein Providence Campus Gallery are an exploration of Devon and Dartmoor UK. Married to an Englishman, Maxey has for many years observed the colors and shapes of the rugged Dartmoor hills and the River Dart coastal area.
Now she has taken them on in a series of paintings where she takes real locations and creates imagined, ambiguous landscapes. In one painting, Maxey finds abstract shapes in a square-cut hedgerow in the moors. The large glacial rock formations depicted in the “Erosion Triptych” were for the most part painted with her hand, rather than brush.
The largest and most colorful work is a 12 foot long painting looking down on the River Dart from the patio of their house. The view is what is seen or imagined from an ambiguous point of view, nothing quite real yet fully capturing the feel of the river below and the landscape beyond.
Perhaps most intriguing are the paintings of ancient crosses and rock formations on Dartmoor. Over the years, Maxey has managed to locate these stone objects and now gives us her personal impressions of their worn shapes in the natural landscape. Also included are several paintings of the immediate area around their home in Kingswear.
