Name: Madeline Silber
Hometown: Born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey and spent most of my adult life living in Manhattan, Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn until I moved upstate to Oneonta in 1996.
Training/School: B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in Painting/Literature, M.F.A. in Painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art.
Community Involvement:
Currently I have a solo exhibition Entanglements in the Fine Arts Gallery at SUNY College at Oneonta, February 4th-29th. For more information call Tim Sheesley, Gallery Director 607-433-3456. A color brochure with an essay by Thomas Piché Jr. accompanies the exhibition.
I will be giving a gallery talk on Wednesday February 27th, 1:30 pm, which is free and open to the public.
Describe your ‘art’:
I’m a painter. I make small intimate oil paintings. My work exists somewhere in between abstraction 
and representation. The forms are imagined yet they’re painted by using traditional painting techniques. They appear as if they’re real objects inhabiting a plausible space, but actually are a vocabulary of characters that I’ve developed over time, that have multiple references and metaphoric associations.
Who or what inspires your work?
The illusion of representing three-dimensional forms in a two-dimensional space is still magical to me. I love the slowness that painting affords for images to develop over time. (I usually spend 2-6 months on one painting). In my paintings I’m inspired to portray the struggle we all have in trying to juggle the complexity of our contemporary relationships. I’m interested in the subtleties of connection and separateness. My paintings could be viewed as playful magnifications of the way things work, strange still lives of dancers in mid-motion, or family members struggling for autonomy. Some of my all time favorite painters are: Vermeer, Chardin, Velazquez, Morandi, Alice Neel, and Philip Guston.
What do you think is needed to help the art community thrive in our region?
I would like to see more funding sources for artists living upstate who are actively pursuing both regional and national careers. If more individuals bought and collected local artist’s works and our museums had more aggressive acquisition policies for collecting regional artists that would be helpful. Also more grant funding aimed toward artists living outside of New York City.
Advice to aspiring artists:
Be open to other people’s insights about your work, but stick to what matters to you most. Your work is the same whether you get rejected or accepted to a certain show. It’s hard to remember that when we all want to be recognized for what we do.
Who are you listening to and/or reading right now?
Right now in my studio I’m listening to The Roches recent CD Moonswept, Aimee Mann's The Forgotten Arm, and the soundtrack for Once. Recent books I really enjoyed, Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy, After Long Silence by Helen Tremont, and The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant.
What is important to you?
Trying to find some balance in my life between painting in the studio, trying to get my work out into the world, spending time with my 8 year old twin daughters and my husband, and staying connected with friends, especially artists who don’t live in Oneonta. I love walking my kids to school in the morning, working out, enjoying how beautiful it is here, watching movies, reading books, keeping a sense of humor about everything I tend to be very serious about.
Who are your personal heroes?
People who keep pursuing their art no matter how it’s received in the “art world” at different times. This can be so hard.
Do you have any upcoming shows or events that you’d like the public to know about?
In April my work will be included in the 61st Exhibition of Central New York Artists at the Munson Williams Proctor Institute in Utica, N.Y. A catalog and podcast of many participating artists speaking about their work will be available.
'Behind the Art' is a regular series that profiles the people behind the
arts in our community. If you'd like to be profiled in 'Behind
the Art,' email editor Crystal Sarakas.
photographing schools across the country. In June 2008, she documented her twelfth and final prom at Ithaca High School.
