Wyoming Arts Council

Jon Madsen exhibit opens March 13


madsen art

Jon Madsen’s Artist Statement:

With this exhibition of paintings, Wyoming Arts Council fellowship winner Jon Madsen worked to construct an image, not to transcribe or interpret one which pre-exists ‘out there’. Madsen uses the motif of the road or path quite a bit. In the west, the main feature of landscape is here and there, near and far, and by extension, present and future. There really aren’t many objects.

His work generally grows out of ideas and sensations which come from many sources: observations of the natural world, observations of what happens in his paintings and drawings, and speculation on ‘what could come next’, or is implied by a recent painting.  He does not ‘record’ the world of appearances so much as uses what he understands of its visual ‘magic’ to make convincing and attractive additions to his world of experience.

About the Artist:

Jon Madsen was born in Kansas, grew up in Wyoming and made friends with the wind and open spaces. He attended college at the University of Wyoming BFA/MFA 1973 majoring in Art.  Madsen then held a 25-year career in computers to support a family and his “painting habit”. From 1998 – 2007, he taught Beginning Drawing and Watercolor classes for the University of Wyoming Art Department.

He is interested in picturing visual sensations, something like the feeling one gets from a glance at this moment, of the world we are passing through. Madsen has been actively entering competitive shows, and has had a few one-person shows.  In 2000 and 2006 he received Wyoming Arts Council Fellowships. Now retired, Madsen is still painting and living in Laramie.


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