Madison Wheatley is a visual artist from Fayetteville, GA. She is a painter, but she has recently dipped her toe in the pool of craft – and has loved every second of it. She likes to intertwine the two forms of art, blurring the lines between traditional art and craft. In her art, she explores femininity, what it means to be feminine, and how this impacts her own view of everyday life. She studies at the University of North Georgia, graduating this May with her B.A. in Studio Art.
Artist Statement
This piece, an embroidered reimagination of the widely known Vermeer, is one piece of a larger series. This piece is using a traditionally “low-art” medium to recreate one of the most recognizable women in art history. With this piece, and series, I aim to recreate well-known women in art history by using craft to create the image. By using this medium that is traditionally thought of as “feminine” and low in the hierarchy of art to recreate this iconic piece, it brings a new light on the subject. This piece critiques the ideas of “low-art” and “high-art.” Recently, craft is becoming a more accepted form of artwork, but it is still widely considered just craft, not art. This piece aims to blur the lines between craft and art until it becomes one. This means that I am critiquing the patri
archal nature of art as a whole, as well. Because men have traditionally said what goes in the art world, for centuries they considered anything women made (especially if it had a purpose besides being decorative) not true art. By incorporating a craft that is traditionally feminine into a piece that is purely decorative, I aim to make the audience think about women’s roles in art.
To create this piece, I stretched raw canvas over stretcher bars. Once stretched, I referenced Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” and sketched out the basic shapes and planar changes. Once sketched, I used the image to pick out the closest colors to the image. Then, I spent hours, and hours, and hours embroidering the piece.
Untitled, 2023
Stretched Canvas, Embroidery Thread