Michael Madore

Michael Madore's early work (numbers 1–8, 10–16, and 23) was essentially self-taught. In the late seventies/early eighties he was using enamel on paper and cast off plywood.

Madore who has Asperger's Syndrome (a form of autism) took refuge as a child in drawing maps, cartoons, radio playlists, mechanical drawing, and weather statistics. In college he majored in art history, focusing on medieval manuscript illumination and nineteenth century artists/illustrators such as William Dadd and Stanley Appelbaum Grandville. Madore uses text in his drawings to cryptically narrate the premise of the paintings.

The early, East Village work (1977-1983) is dense with current flowing freely from innumerable radios, televisions, and satellites to the neuro-transmitters of the creatures operating them. The all-over frenetic handling of these paintings makes them appear to actively pulsate. Pop imagery such as the Flinstones in day-glow crank up the volume of the pieces.

Madore moved to New Haven in 1983-1989 and for nearly a decade he continued to work in relative isolation, while meticulously creating a body of work known as the Sirenians (a quasi scientific/monastic tribe from another planet). In 1987 while hospitalized at Yale-New Haven Hospital, he took the advice of his psychiatrist and entered the Yale MFA painting program.

In his recent work, Madore fuses drawing with painting using the unconventional medium of ink. The work is so densely drawn it requires focus to understand who the players are amidst a backdrop of brains, animals, aliens, cell towers, nurses from outer space and policemen. These characters are part of a master script Madore has created and brought to life in a fantastical mini-series of his own invention.