Madeline Skeen

Madeline Skeen is an interdisciplinary artist interested in exploring the potential for symbiosis in human interactions with the environment. Her recent site-specific works start from an exploration of lived-experience and extend to reflect on the relationship between land and body.

The practice of psychosomatic therapy is grounded in the belief that the body and mind will head towards healing when surrounded by the right conditions. The artist believes that this potential for healing extends to our relationship with the environment, and that emphasizing our inherent abilities for connection, empathy, and growth may give us more solid ground to stand on when envisioning an environmentally sustainable future. With this series, she attempts to create a portrait of her own integration into natural systems in a way that draws attention to the potential for unity. While the processes of decay, parasitism, and disease are often forefronted in descriptions of human interaction with the environment, this series of works speaks to the idea that it is also important to affirm our embodied abilities for regeneration, harmony, and reciprocal relationship with the land.

The works in this series are created with found natural materials that are assembled through meditative process. The methods of hand-stitching, dying with natural materials, and assemblage are often employed in the artist’s work; these methods extend the artist’s understanding and relationship with the natural materials that she works with, as well as the environments that create them. These works are returned to the landscapes from which their materials were sourced; they are then disintegrated or reassembled by the tides, wind, or other natural processes at play in the spaces that created them. Through this process the artist aims to open herself to the spaces she interacts with, and allow the internal shifts promoted by each environment to inform her way of being in the world.