Micheal Madigan, “Some Years Away,” Recent Paintings

Morpeth Contemporary presents “Some Years Away,” a new body of work by Michael Madigan. Reflecting on his travel and study, these paintings, as Madigan describes them, “don’t address a subject but rather explore the nature of events that I found memorable.”

Thousands of years away, the show includes works inspired by the distant past, with canvases evoking prehistoric stone monuments in Ireland and archaeological sites in Spain. Decades away, it is also about the recent past, when Madigan traveled to these sites, discovering their palpable history. Most powerfully, however, “Some Years Away” describes the past few years when Madigan (re)visited memories that made an enduring mark: ocean-ready “curraghs,” church bells, Mediterranean water, paths amidst mountains, entry points of bridges, even quiet moments during moonlit hours.

This body of work marks a major transition in Madigan’s painting after 28 years of exploring place and presence. Using a subtractive painting process, these tonal works — rather than relying on color — allow the subtle exploration of light and dark to bring places to the surface.

Vivid, faded, intense, layered, fragmented, altered, even lost and refound — “Some Years Away” is about memory itself, how we construct and reconstruct it, and how the events that we assign meaning live within us.

Madigan’s work has been widely exhibited in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., and is represented in numerous collections, including The Carnegie Institute, the Musée de Beaux Arts, Bristol Myers Squibb, Sandler O’Neil, and Johnson & Johnson. He also taught painting at the College of New Jersey.