Lance Avery Morgan
In a city as colorful and artful as Austin, we look forward to visiting East Austin’s Lydia Street Gallery , which will honor the work of Madelon Umlauf in an upcoming exhibit in September, Harmonizing the Rapture of Color.
Madelon Umlauf, who happens to be the daughter of internationally known sculptor Charles Umlauf (of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden) is a native Austinite. She has pursued her art education at the University of Texas in Austin, as well as New York City. We love that Madelon taught painting for 30 years at Austin Community College, while also painting for herself in a downtown Austin studio.
Her paintings are inspired by nature and her surroundings. Starting with natural motifs, she then reworks her discoveries into abstract paintings. The paintings achieve their finality when their forms in illusionistic deep space, come into dynamic and coloristic balance. Although her paintings are inspired by nature, she often chooses color palettes which are atypical of the usual colors one sees in nature and attracted to round paintings because they do not have ratios.
Most paintings, being rectangular, have various ratios of width to height, but human binocular vision is circular in format. By virtue of taking over one’s oval of vision, the aesthetic impact of round paintings is stronger than that of rectangular paintings. Ancient civilizations acknowledged the circle as a sacred shape. Madelon Umlauf’s work reflects a belief that abstract art is the key to a full comprehension of reality. Her work is meant to elicit an interpretation, one that leaves the realm of experience open to intuition as a main factor of transformation.
Her exhibit will take place from September–October 30, 2023 and an artist reception will occur Saturday, September 23, 6-9 pm. The Lydia Street Gallery exhibits mid and late-career artists from Austin and beyond. Lydia Street hopes to provide artists the attention they deserve and a welcoming place for the community to engage in the beautiful, challenging, mystifying world of art.
