Madeleine Fitzpatrick (b.1958, San Francisco, CA) is an Irish-American artist whose paintings and monoprints teeter on the edge between figuration and abstraction to reapproach the human body from a radical perspective, one that is cosmic and fluid in nature. What appears to be a heightened sense of nudity and erotic energy is only the tip of the iceberg, as there is a larger portion hidden beneath the fragmented depiction of bodies in her works. Hermaphrodites and human-animal hybrids strategically come together to blur socially constructed binaries and norms, giving visibility to historically othered bodies. Challenging the patriarchal normativity, Fitzpatrick’s ghostly figures celebrate monstrosity and in-between states, queering taken-for-granted conceptions of bodies and selves, instead offering a cyborgian approach and a glitch in the form of vast multiplicity. Developing her style in the early 1980s, the artist can be perceived as a rebel of her time, due to the dominantly male point of view toward nude female figures and the double standard between male and female nudity in art history.

With a palette ranging from soft hues of yellows, pinks, and greens to deep blacks, Fitzpatrick’s paintings often take the form of life-size figures. Bodies appearing to be hardly fitting into the hard edges of the paper, almost ready to flow out of these rectangular boxes, get juxtaposed with thinner slices of paper, accommodating limbs, bones, horse heads, and breasts. The architecture becomes part of these pieces, with the wall’s negative space filling the interspaces and eventually forming a narrative that is irregular and cyclical on purpose. Recurring themes in these pieces, such as Epona—the ancient horse goddess of the pagan Gallic peoples—echo the artist’s early life in the Irish countryside, a feminist approach as personal is political. The white silhouettes of wishbones, juxtaposed to dark backgrounds, constitute another repetitive theme across the artist’s oeuvre. Turning into human or animal figures at times, these bones problematize the fragile line between the states of hope, ecstasy, despair, and possibility.

Black and white monoprints from the late 1980s feature surrealist narratives of cave-like interiors with multiple figures floating in the air making dramatic shadows while also interacting with otherworldly creatures, animals, and giants. These pieces offer a psychoanalytical approach, bringing Jungian archetypes to mind, evoking collective unconsciousness and shared ancestral memories. Eerie decks and piers in the dark that don’t seem to have any beginning or end, depictions of stormy weather in pastels, dolls made of organic materials, a bursting garden to care for, and a collection of hats—they all come together to narrate the story of a transdisciplinary practice that is beyond genres to seize multiplicity and slipperiness as a survival methodology.

Madeleine Fitzpatrick lives and works in Marshall, California. Major recent museum solo shows include Recent Work, Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA (2009).

Listen to Madeleine Fitzpatrick in conversation with Michael Krasny on "Art Forum" - KQED Radio: