1. Describe your experience of professional training and how does it continue to inform your process and productivity?
My portfolio of work to gain acceptance to Massachusetts College of Art was all collage. Once in, I eventually had to choose a department in which to major. While my early collages were very graphic design oriented, I wanted more freedom to be loose and explore and chose the painting dept. While taking traditional foundation courses of painting I specifically chose studio instructors who were known to give good direction to those students who had an independent streak with ideas straying from those foundations (still life, landscape, portraiture). This allowed me to explore mixed media ideas incorporating sculpture, painting, drawing and collage, more 3D and textured than 2D and flat. Combined w/insightful critiques and academic studies, this education further gave me the confidence to pursue my own unique work, blurring lines/boundaries.
2. What is your average day like both in the studio and out and about?
My average day in the studio often consists of hours and hours and hours of cutting detailed and delicate shapes/characters from vintage children’s books. I may be in the middle of a piece and searching for the right character. Scouring thru vintage children’s coloring books, searching for the right one, the right energy, the right size and line… I think I may have found it but I have to cut it out before I know for sure if it works, kind of like finding the right puzzle piece. If it’s not a fit, it becomes inventory. Files full of various cut outs for future use. To pay my bills, I am a massage therapist and typically am working 4 days a week. Weather and season permitting, I love to be at the beach as often as possible, lying in the sun and swimming. It’s play, it’s energizing, close to nature, soulful and meditative. I also spend lots of time scouring eBay for source material for my art, as well as vintage mermaids… a 35-year collector!
Chinese Lanterns 1, 2019
Collage/Works on Paper
6 × 9 in
3. Can you tell us a little more about your work "Chinese Lanterns 1" for which you won the Young Masters & Brownhill Peoples Choice Awards in 2019?
First, I have to say, I honestly love and find great joy in the creation of all my work. Chinese Lanterns 1 and Chinese Lanterns 2 both follow a trend I often pursue, working on top of a pre-existing image or pattern. In this case, a vintage lithograph of paper Chinese lanterns, purchased on eBay. I was drawn to the delicate lines, colors and texture of the lithograph as well as the delicacy, buoyancy and volume of these common items of a foreign culture; functional, colorful and joyful. As with all my collages, images of children are common symbolizing play, innocence and imagination. In Chinese Lanterns 1 we see a boy fishing in between two forces, calm, relaxed, waiting, patient. To his right a jumble of imagery, tangled, overlapping, layered… a cowboy, a horse, an astronaut, children at play, a giant flower that looks like a fire pit. To his left an equally layered structure of imagery… a girl on a swing, an upside down Jack-o-lantern, a colorful kimono, patent leather shoes popping out above and below, standing atop a pile of rubble, an extinct fire pit? The fishing boy squeezed between layered thoughts of his experience and imagination, compositionally balanced on a ledge between two seemingly chaotic forces.
4. Can you share a little about your current work in progress?
I just completed a body of work for what was to be my first actual solo exhibit slated for May but had to be postponed due to covid19 state wide closures. During the shut down and being unemployed I was able to be in the studio every day, all day, 7 days a week. This enabled me to be more focused and unrushed to finish my final piece for the exhibit and my largest piece to date, a 4’ x 6’ collage developed on top of a vintage Asian folding screen with an image of some fanciful green tailed birds in a blooming magnolia tree. Unlike earlier pieces, like Chinese Lanterns 1, what previously was densely layered loosened up and imagery (like the fishing boy) were revealed to the viewer. By doing so, a narrative developed with a cast of characters, circus acrobats, dancers, plants and animals of different sizes and shapes (all hand cut) traversed the screen… parading across the ground, amongst the tree limbs and flowers and flying thru the air, a true feast of imaginative story telling. As two boys slumbered in the bough of the tree comes the title: Dreaming In the Bough of the Magnolia Tree. As with other works developed on top of Asian imagery, I enjoyed exploring the interplay between East/West, old/new, high/low (brow).
Since the completion of this piece I have purchased another smaller Asian folding screen that has an image of a tree branch spread across the four panels with several beautiful blue birds in it’s branches. I have only just begun considering and exploring some preliminary images to insert into this landscape to see how they interact and where it takes me.
5. Are there any particular people, places or things that serve as points of inspiration for you and your work?
Vintage and nostalgic materials…weathered/worn toys, books and clothing for their patterns, colors, shapes, line work and essence. Nature (particularly the beach) for the same reasons but also for the sense of being alive, free, opening and clearing one’s mind, play. The list of artists I admire are vast, varied, multi disciplined, including dance and architecture, famous and not, and a strong love for folk and indigenous arts.
6. What do you wish for people to encounter or experience when they take in your work?
I love when I see viewers drawn in to investigate closer and utterances of joy, wonder and laughter are elicited as they discover hidden images, connections and associations of my works’ construction, detail and messaging.
What are some of the statements people have made about your work that have resonated or stuck with you?
How did you do that? You cut all those pieces out by hand? I love living with your work, I am constantly seeing something different even years later. Your work brings me so much joy.
7. In your Collage/Works on Paper you use many different types of materials and elements, do you have a selection process for this and how do you choose them?
Vintage children’s coloring books and storybooks are my predominant materials at the moment. I seek out vintage as I am attracted to period colors, lines and imagery that vary from decade to decade. For my collaging, vintage paper quality is also very important as far as adhering, typically more porous with more ‘tooth’ than today’s slick print papers. Backgrounds, such as the various lithographs and screens I have been working on, have been chosen not only for the same reasons listed above, but also for a cross cultural play of imagery.
8. How has COVID-19 and the lockdown affected your day to day life and approach to creative work?
It has impacted my day to day life here in Boston quite a bit. I did have my first actual solo exhibit scheduled here in Boston from May 29 – July 7 but it had to be postponed until spring 2021, perhaps for the best. As well as a working artist I am also a massage therapist. The spa where I work had to close mid March. I’m not sure it has affected my approach to creative work, but a silver lining for me is that I have been able to walk to my studio and have the luxury of working unfettered 24/7 while collecting unemployment. A rarity for most struggling artists. There is also something about the city being shut down that is hauntingly peaceful and beautiful, less chaotic, less frantic, less traffic, less city noise. A forced time to slow down, for contemplation and to reset, be it societal, professional, personal, all three.
View Keith Maddy’s most recent exhibition at Howard Yezerski Gallery