Madeline Marak

Greenwood Cemetery, No. 1

BY Madeline Marak
MEDIUM Oil on polystyrene

Taking from my immediate surroundings, I create representations of the land spaces I inhabit. I explore the space where humans and nature interact, where the built environment and natural collide to create a negotiated interspace of the urban environment. My practice is motivated by walking, being present, being perceptive, and engaged with my surroundings. Through painting and photography, I represent the land and my exploration of it. I acknowledge the framework, the lens, and the guise through which I see the natural world. Multiple representations of seemingly similar images reveal a mediated space between reality and my experience of it. I contemplate a collective relationship to photography’s spurious objectivity yet a reliance on its perpetuation as facsimile. Painting draws me closer to the tactility of land and reveals a yearning for an engagement with the physical. Through multiple mediums, processes, framing and reframing, I move closer to identifying a contemporary ideology of landscape representations while defining my personal relationship to the landscapes I encounter.