Madeline Hinrichs
My paintings combine two realities—South Netherlandish unicorn tapestries and dated Midwestern interiors—that are both easy to tell apart because they do not belong together, and integrated because they coexist convincingly in the same space. Through careful collage, a distant past is blended into a time that is still familiar to us. While my paintings encompass large interiors and narratives, my embroideries hone in on smaller, more intimate subjects. Since embroidery has the stigma of being a homemaker’s hobby, I work from source material that rejects this stereotype. There is a certain amount of confusion that occurs in the transfer from image to embroidery. The crop of the embroidery, the lack of color, the fragments of text, and partially formed people create an abstract space where the viewer can fit what they see into their own context.