Madonna Walters
Run Before the Wind
Acrylic on Canvas
A new large scale art banner featuring the work of Madonna Walters will be installed by Britten Studios on September 3, 2015 (subject to change) at 310 West Front Street in Traverse City. The banner is produced from her original painting entitled Run Before the Wind.
Madonna Walters is an artist from the Traverse City area known for her large color-field abstract paintings. She is a former art student of Northwestern Michigan College (NMC), where she trained with Paul Welch, Norm Averill, and Jack Ozegovic. Madonna now lives and works in Ann Arbor, but her roots are in Leelanau County, where she was raised on the family farm, and where she found her earliest inspiration to paint. “I think it was the combination of enormous open spaces and the relentless power of Lake Michigan, the lakeshore, and the ever-present wind that imprinted my psyche and my paintings,” says Madonna.
The Traverse City Art Banner project is the brainchild of former NMC Art Department Chair Paul Welch, who along with a committee of artists and art supporters has been seeking empty walls on downtown Traverse City buildings and asking the owners of the buildings to allow them to become outdoor galleries with reproduction banners of art by regional artists; former NMC art students and imagery from the collections of the Dennos Museum Center, who is a collaborative partner with the Banner Project.
The art banners are hung for several months, during which the Committee and Dennos are working to select new images and find additional buildings to become outdoor galleries for the work.
The project is supported by private donors who provide the funds for printing and installation by Britten Studios of the reproduced art works.
The new installation by Madonna Walters joins the work of Traverse City artist Calvin Boulter entitled “A Space Time Continuum” and the work “Thunderbird Man” by Aboriginal Canadian artist Norval Morrisseau from the collections of the Dennos Museum Center. Norval Morrisseau will be featured in an upcoming exhibition of his work from the Dennos collections, opening on September 20, 2015.
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Background:
The Traverse City Banner Art Committee
Paul Welch, Chair, Dennos Museum Center Executive Director Gene Jenneman, Robin Stanley, Collen Paviglio, Chris Dennos Calvin Boulter, Cherie Correll, Delbert Michel, Charles Murphy, John Williams, Nancy Grist and Kris Schroeder.
The Banner Artist
Madonna Walters is an artist from the Traverse City area who is known for her large color-field abstract paintings. She has also painted under the name Madonna Walters Ballance in the past. Her roots are in Leelanau County, where she was raised on the family farm, and where she found her earliest inspiration to paint. “I think it was the combination of enormous open spaces and the relentless power of Lake Michigan, the lakeshore, and the ever-present wind that imprinted my psyche and my paintings,” says Madonna.
Madonna spent many years in Traverse City, including her time as an art student at Northwestern Michigan College (NMC), where she trained with Paul Welch, Norm Averill, and Jack Ozegovic. “My first exposure to the NMC Art Department was in the basement of the original Administrative wing, just off the original Army barracks building. There, on most days you could hear Paul Welch singing opera or Fats Domino to a scratchy LP on a beat-up turntable. It was a tiny department, with barely room for your easel and supplies, but it was the most creatively charged environment I have ever experienced. ” Later, this was replaced by the new art building – an architect’s dream with enormous windows that provided unparalleled natural light. “I painted in both environments, and I can honestly say that NMC was like a soup kettle of creative invention. Students were continuously working and pushing each other to try new things.”
Madonna has another career as a nurse, and continues to work full-time in health care as a Trauma Program Manager in southern Michigan. “The two careers have not been that emotionally disparate, but you can think of the hospital environment as tightly controlled whereas my art was as an escape valve for everything that happened during the day. They have really mirrored each other.”
Madonna R. Walters
1546 Marlborough Dr.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Email: Apricots1@gmail.com