Maud Madsen's Oil Paintings Explore Childhood Memories, Daydreams, and Nesting
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Nostalgia and youthful imagination converge in Brooklyn-based artist Maud Madsen's enigmatic oil paintings.

Maud Madsen’s Oil Paintings Explore Childhood Memories, Daydreams, and Nesting

Brooklyn-based artist Maud Madsen delves into what it means to find comfort, inspiration, and security in our domestic spaces. Her current solo exhibition, Dweller at Half Gallery, taps into the vast realm of memory as she depicts herself building structures in the snow or pillow forts from couch cushions—activities we often associate with kids’ unbridled creativity and ingenuity. They are also shelters.

Evocative of children’s book author Chris Van Allsburg’s dramatic and mysterious illustrations in acclaimed titles like Jumanji, Polar Express, and The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, Madsen often centers the living room or bedroom—places that define relaxation and dreaming—as places where voyages of the imagination take place.

an oil painting by Maud Madsen of an illuminated blanket fort“Twin Beds (Blanket Fort)” (2025), oil on linen, 78 x 110 inches

For Madsen, a similar approach shapes her renditions of childhood activities that highlight nostalgic and engrossing activities like building blanket forts or playing with a 1980s-era Fisher Price farm set. Deep shadows, enigmatic settings, and uncanny situations converge in the artist’s alluring and mysterious oil paintings.

“Because all of the artist’s compositions deal with childhood memories, Maud is also quite literally dwelling on the past,” the gallery says. “The double meaning of her show title is a kind of trick mirror, or maybe force-multiplier, concentrating our attention on the spaces (many self-created) that her figures occupy.”

Lit perhaps by a distant porch light or the moon shining in through a window, the artist’s recent paintings are set at night, suggesting these moments may be dreams or even the result of insomnia. Nighttime can be seen as symbolic of both an ending and a transition into something new, like that of adolescence to adulthood. Madsen’s compositions also examine the notion of “nesting,” in which we carefully organize and curate our domestic spaces to define our tastes and needs in a way that feels comfortable, autonomous, and safe.

Dweller continues through October 2 in New York City. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

an oil painting by Maud Madsen of a nighttime scene where a figure is concealed in the cushions of a tartan couch with only her legs visible“Den” (2025), oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches an oil painting by Maud Madsen of a woman outside in the snow, under an evergreen tree“Canopy” (2025), oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches an oil painting by Maud Madsen of a nighttime scene inside a house, surrounding by childhood games and toys“Lights Out” (2025), oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches an oil painting by Maud Madsen of a nighttime scene where a woman is standing on a chair and building a fort out of blankets“Night Shift” (2025), oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches an oil painting by Maud Madsen of a woman in a coat and snow pants making a structure out of snow“Heavy Snow” (2025), oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches

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