The Season: This new painting reads as familiar territory for someone who has spent time in an LDS chapel, but if someone knows your work, it’s also perfectly in tune with what you’re doing in your fine art work. Tell us about this painting.

Madeline Rupard: As artists we often joke that we didn’t want a 9 to 5 so we chose a 24/7. It’s true though in the sense that I’m never off the clock, and I’m always on the lookout for a new painting. Specifically places where contradictions exist, the suburban and the sublime, the miraculous and the mundane, the eternal and the ordinary both existing in the same place. So when I entered (late) through the foyer for sacrament meeting in my new ward in East Brooklyn and saw the Resurrected Christ painting by Harry Anderson staring at me in perfect “textures of Mormonism” form, I decided to delay myself a moment further for a photo reference. I also like paintings to be a little funny and a little beautiful at the same time which I think is true of this image. There’s something so humorously ordinary about this image to members of our faith, especially with the yellow-hued indoor lighting, textured wall padding, and ceiling vent. (We Mormons are exceptionally consistent with air conditioning, so much so that the soft low hum of an HVAC makes me instantly feel like I'm in the Lord's house) I also really enjoy paintings of paintings. They are not only fun to paint but self referential to art and the act of painting, and why we do it. One of my favorite places in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is in the 18th century European painting section and looking at Giovanni Paolo Panini's opulent neoclassical hallways of paintings of paintings. 

The Season: That painting of Panini’s is just the wackiest thing. I also love paintings of artist’s studios, don’t you? I could move into Matisse’s The Red Studio and be totally happy forever. When you make a painting of another person’s painting, are you trying to interpret it, comment on it, or to enter a conversation with it?

Madline Rupard: The Red Studio is so wonderful. I love that you referenced that piece. I remember in my first year of grad school going to the MoMA before class one day and spending an hour in front of that painting—it was the moment Matisse really clicked for me. When I’m painting another person’s painting, I see it as less of a judgment on it and more of a change in context that I hope brings forth some of its hidden potential. It also can be seen as a conversation with the present and the past. Kind of like how musicians will sample something older to give a song an added layer of dimension. Harry Anderson’s The Resurrected Jesus Christ is a painting I’ve seen most of my life in the context of going to church, serving in my calling, etc. I like the idea of zooming out and considering where these paintings are being seen and who they’re being seen by and how that affects their ultimate meaning. By the way, did you know the painter was a Seventh day-Adventist? 

The Season: Yes, I did. Your new painting, Jesus Painting Painting, reminds me a little of some photographs by Mark Hedengren, who created images of people in an LDS church building someplace doing things that we all recognize immediately, like member volunteers vacuuming in the foyer. LDS life is unique, don’t you agree, because our worship environments have a sameness, almost a universal visual vocabulary? Is that something that speaks to you?

Madeline Rupard: That sameness is both a comforting thing and sometimes a point of frustration if I’m being honest. But I want to explore both sides of that coin. I served my mission in Hungary in my early 20s and enjoyed the newer European styles of church buildings because they had more natural light, but ultimately I was comforted by the familiarity of the hymn books and the consistent air conditioning (which was not to be found in most Hungarian buildings!) On P days, I would always try and persuade my companion to let us go into a Roman Catholic Church for a bit, because I do love the architecture. John Ruskin wrote about how the medieval churches were modeled after forests. Whether or not you believe the Nicene Creed, you can feel a real reverence for natural forms and light in those spaces. Sometimes I struggle with the aesthetic pragmatism of our religion, but it also makes sense for a church that is ever-expanding to keep costs low. If you are a visually-minded person, it’s very easy to dismiss the ideas taught within based on the surfaces you don’t agree with. But what I’m always hoping for in my work is that the viewer take a more generous view. By painting these things, I’m trying to show the whole picture and let the viewer take away what they will. Everything I’ve said above also mirrors my joy and struggle with America and the American West and what I’m continually exploring in my work. 

The Season: You shared with me another painting that has an Easter theme. Are these paintings part of a series? How do you see them fitting into your body of work?

Madeline Rupard: Both this piece Jesus Painting Painting and Mormon Easter are unique to the work I'm making because they are more explicitly religious, in that they depict the ordinary spaces and scenes in which I worship. I don't usually paint directly about my experience being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I haven't often felt called to that subject matter. But many years ago, an artist friend I really respect told me that my work was “religious.” I held this close to my heart as a true compliment, because I knew she saw straight through the surfaces of the work to the core of what it was really about. This comment became aspirational to me. I really wanted my paintings of gas stations, grocery stores, highways, and parking lots to feel like professions of belief. Maybe I'll make more paintings about being a person who goes to church. Maybe I won't. But I don't think that an artwork can truly ever escape the heart and mind of its creator. In that sense, if I really believe that God exists and that He loves us very much, every painting is an Easter painting.