PATRICK MADDEN
ARTIST
Patrick Madden
About Patrick Madden
I grew up in a small town in Ohio that was very much like Rhinebeck. It was called Hudson (named after David, not Henry). As a kid, anything that I saw in my mind would soon appear on a piece of paper. My Mother would always say, "You're such a good drawer."
And somehow, I wandered into the advertising business...for twenty years. Living in San Francisco working at a famous ad agency, I would come home each night, take off the Brooks Brothers suit, put on the Carrharts and descend into my basement studio. After an hour or so of work on last night's painting, I would take a cab down Union Street into North Beach, a place where the blue bloods and strippers, Chinatown and Little Italy, the homeless and celebrities would all collide. Like Lautrec, they were my models. The faces, the lines, the emotions were all waiting to be drawn.
I was an art major on a golf scholarship at the University of Missouri, I took classes at the San Francisco Art Institute, studied under one of California's greatest landscape painters. But mostly, I just practiced. I would read the artist's own words (Cezanne, DeKooning, Richter, Homer, Banksy and Kilmt). They were and are my teachers.
Current Work
I am mostly focused these days on drawing--drawings in my Moleskine sketchbook and large drawings on that sturdy Hahnemuhle paper, drawings as tall as me, with a wash of oil color over them. Also, AFTER works. Taking my favorite drawings from my teachers and doing them in my style. Acknowledging along the way what that teacher taught me.
For the large AFTER Klimt pieces I took three of my favorite drawings of his and turned them (almost) into paintings.
More Information
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