Near Land Painting

Madeline Peckenpaugh's paintings are depictions of metaphorical, pictorial, and abstracted landscapes. Inspired by her everyday experiences, memory, and her photographs, they engage with our understanding of space and how our surroundings affect us. Peckenpaugh's paintings are devoid of human depiction, but the sense that they once occupied the space is evident from the manipulation of manicured forms amongst the "wild", or abstract. Peckenpaugh is interested in the border between the nature of real things and the nature of imagined things, allowing them to merge into another. Our trained perception of the landscape can become questioned, as monumental structures begin to vaporize, and natural forms become paper thin. There is a reconciliation of opposites: deep space of the real world with the flat space of the canvas. As Paul Nougé wrote, "Nothing makes the reality of space so uncertain as the painting of reality. You realize how complicated the space is once you start painting it.”