THE ART OF MADELINE AND PETER POWELL
The hyper realism of the Powell’s is arresting visually and emotionally. The creative duo conjures fantastical worlds where raw emotion and pure memory inhabit a land of New American Nostalgia. Using the iconography of American pop culture, they succeed in exalting the effervescent joy of an imagined American past, where childlike wonder exists side by side with sophisticated photorealism and the nuanced experience of modern life.
“WELCOME TO THE COS BAR”
Madeline Powell
Maui, Hawaii
Madeline approaches her artwork as she approaches life: with curiosity, joy, wonder and happiness. The emotional experience and visceral reaction to her work evokes optimism and creates the environment we all wish to live in.
Madeline Powell has an approach unlike her predecessors, though her work could be mistaken for dyed-in-the-wool photorealists. Trained at the University of Ohio, Athens (BFA) and the Cooper School of Art in Cleveland, she deftly handles her subject matter with an eye for the interconnectedness of shared memories. Working in a creative duo with her husband Peter Powell she asserts an individuality that complements their working style to create wondrous and fantastical vignettes of American modernity through her minute eye for detail and meticulous craftsmanship. Just as in Bite The Bullet (2022), the micro begets the macro: worlds within worlds exist in the pair’s work by virtue of a true union of artists. Having met on the island of Maui in 1976, their creative partnership developed into a natural complementary approach to painting and life and continues to evolve in both the terrestrial and painterly spheres to create visionary works of hyperrealism.
“BITE THE BULLET”
Peter Powell
Maui, Hawaii
Uniquely Modernist. Drawing from Pop Culture. Envisions a life in which everyone performs at their best. His artistic process is singularly complex yet relies on Iconic Simplicity. The Artist illustrates a fierce loyalty to how the Collector will savor the art and how the works fit into their realm of experience.
Peter Powell is as incandescent as his work, radiating the joyfulness that plays about the color and light in works such as Pumped-Up Poodle (2022). The broad strokes of American life come to dance around his work like the uninhibited guests at a luau. A native Californian and Maui resident, Peter embodies all that is creative. An avid surfer, musician and painter, his work is informed by the landscapes of Maui and California but inextricably linked to the cultural memories of the icons of American modernity. Peter, together with Madeline, has cultivated and brought to life worlds of effervescent joy both buried in the subconscious of American pasts and present, as well as those on the tip of the modern cultural lexicon.
“PUMPED UP POODLE”
ARTIST STATEMENT
Life’s treats and playthings from the past and present are what we capture in our paintings. We enjoy taking the little things out of everyday life and giving them the prominence and importance they had when we were children. Our paintings invoke the childhood spirit that everyday life has buried deep within us. We strive to blend technical photorealism with the sensual memories of one of childhood’s most pleasurable activities: Eating Candy! Not only getting it, but holding it, looking at it, and unwrapping it – the smell, touch shape and taste of it all feature as crucial motifs in our work. Through the dramatically over-sized images of Hershey Kisses, Bazooka Bubble Gum, M&M’s and lollipops along with toys, crayons, cars and food, we explore the grandiose theatricality and corporeality of American modernity, seeking especially to harness the joy of shared childhood memories.
