MAUD MADSEN

One Foot in Eden

Opening: June 17th, 6-8 PM

June 17th - July 10th, 2026

Maud Madsen treats the seasons episodically, and perhaps we all do. They are a yearly revelation - the cherry blossoms of spring, the first huff of visible breath come late fall - one the painter approaches with restraint and delicacy, quietly embracing the environmental changes while revealing the figure as a constant. Madsen’s latest exhibition, “One Foot in Eden,” borrows its name from the mid-century Edwin Muir poem: 

“Evil and good stand thick around 

In the fields of charity and sin

Where we shall lead our harvest in.”

Paradise is an idyllic construct humans contend with as fantasy, but a fictional landscape the painter approaches as creator. “I'm drawn to Eden as a symbol of childhood - an eternally perfect, unchanging paradise,” explains Madsen. “I'm using imagery from the four seasons to explore impermanence as something that belongs to the fallen world and wouldn't exist in a static paradise. The seasonal cycles of growth and decay are an example of the strange blessings that come with experience, suggesting that change and mortality are what give life its depth and meaning.”

Citing Bruegel the Elder’s “Series of the Months” as inspiration, Madsen compresses his six-panel series into our traditional four seasons. A female couple in each of her scenes suggests companionship, and this doubling also allows an “other” to bear witness to our life as the snow falls and the brook babbles. The name of her show then begs the question: if we have one foot in Eden, do we plant our other foot in reality or the memory of what we dreamed might one day be?