Sapphire I Collage

Madeleine Wories is a printmaker and painter of Dutch heritage. She was born in the Netherlands, raised in Costa Rica and Australia, studied and worked in Montreal, Canada, and now makes her home in Southern California. Her abstracts evolve through an ongoing dialogue with the painting, acting and reacting to the process intuitively. In the spirit of abstract expressionism, through colour, shape, line, texture, marks, gesture and movement, she strives to find a balance between control and spontaneity where intention and unpredictability converge. The paintings start with loose ideas, which then evolve until they take on a life of their own. She is more interested in the emotional response to the painting with the aim to evoke rather than to depict. Rarely using traditional brushes, she prefers diverse tools: scrapers of varying sizes, squeegees, palette knives, rollers, and others. She works on paper, canvas, wood panels, and mixed media collages. She often draws inspiration from the environment: landforms, geology, textures, seas, skies, wind and weather, as well as from current events. Her work can be found in several corporate and institutional collections, as well as in private collections. She has exhibited in the US, and internationally (Italy, Spain, Belgium, Macedonia, Japan, Canada, Hungary, Senegal, Australia, Denmark and Germany)