Madeleine Gross is a Toronto/Miami based artist who combines photography and painting to represent how we live in both reality and fantasy. She photographs idyllic scenes from across the world—beaches, lakes, snow-covered mountains and medieval cobbled streets—and paints vibrant strokes over selections of the people, objects, and landscapes. The result is a unique aesthetic: part photo, part painting, photorealism and abstraction in one frame. The blend of styles illustrates the fantasy and daydream of human experience. It comments on how our emotions and expectations color how we see people and places, and it asks us to consider how much of our memories and daily experiences are projections of feelings, hopes, and dreams.
It also opens the viewer to participate in the emotions of another’s photos. Gross’s art enlivens moments we have experienced, and the abstract element of painting allows us to see ourselves in each frame. In many ways, these images, which are popular on Instagram, counteract Instagram: rather than rejecting us, beauty here invites us; the bright swirls of color inspire not anxiety but joy. Gross is the artist of the Instagram era, the artist of seen and unseen, the artist of lived and dreamed. Her images also champion the female figure and its expressions of beauty, strength, and love.
Gross was born in Los Angeles and currently lives in Miami. She studied photography and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) University. At first she applied bright strokes of paint to prints of her photographs with palette knives, and her aesthetic has progressed to cover majorities or even entireties of images in paint. Her art also now features abstract figures painted on photographed landscapes without any human bodies underneath. Through this, Gross continues to develop her visual and symbolic language and push both genres of photograph and painting. She exhibits and sells her work around the world, and it has been featured in publications such as i-D, The Coveteur and Interview Magazine, as well as various exhibitions in the US & UK.
