About the Artist

photographs & graphics by Conor Cole

Biography:

Sooltan Madsen (b. Sun Valley, Idaho) received a B.F.A. in painting from The Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA in 2022, and are currently a 2027 M.F.A. candidate at The Maine College of Art & Design, Portland, ME. They have exhibited their work in solo and group exhibitions across the United States including galleries in Savannah, Chicago, Laguna Beach,  Long Island, and San Diego, as well as internationally in Galway, Ireland. Madsen makes colorful portraits, prints, and sculptures surrounding their Queer/ Syrian & Armenian identity. They are in the permanent collect of the Leather Archive & Museum in Chicago, IL. Their most recent exhibition was a group show at 82 Parris in Portland, ME ‘Daymere’.. They spent January of 2024 at Dorland Artist Colony for an artist residency. 

Artist Statement:

A is for Arab/Armenian – Q is for queer. The crux of my culture – being Arab/Armenian – has impacted every aspect of my life and making, while being queer is so much more than just an orientation, it is itself a culture, a family. The process of making is felt through my whole being, body and mind. It is a compulsion. I must make. Perhaps my mind is too loud, too fast. I cannot help but to be in the studio, it is the time when the world goes quiet for me, and like a racehorse I go.

My practice does, and always will have a relationship to paint, and the luscious goo of it. Oil paint is the material that made me want to pursue the arts, and it will always hold a treasured place in my heart. The work is first and foremost about my dance with the paint. I find myself  engulfed by the goo of painting regularly. My practice also will always have an echo of the self, and I utilize self portraiture as a mode for this. I hope the work has begun to have a metamorphosis — I strive to be able to impart on the viewer my own anguish, and frustration at the outside perceptions of a complacent world. The paint comes from my own desire to communicate through my languages: oil paint, Arabic, Armenian, textile motifs. I find the reason for debate comes from my love of a complex curved canvas. Their potential of seeping a painted imagined world into our own inspires me. I often think that making art about heritage and memory is itself a form of resurrection. It has the power to breathe life into memory and make it last the tests of time.