Madeleine Love is an artist based in London and Arles, France, working between contemporary plein air painting and somatic abstraction.
She is currently completing The Royal College of Art Painting MA 2026. Since completing a double degree in 2014 of a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing and Bachelor of Arts in theatre and performance at the University of New South Wales Art and Design, Sydney, Madeleine has lived and worked between Australia and Europe. She works with themes of nature and embodiment across disciplines of sculpture, painting and performance. In 2019 she took part in the exhibition at Fondation Cartier, Paris, ‘Nous Les Arbres’ (We The Trees) with her living sculpture / performance ‘We Are Nature, We Share The Weather’ exploring how humanity participates in Nature.
Her ongoing fresco series is grounded in her writing and research on ‘Numen’ in sacral-idyllic landscape fresco from late antiquity. ‘Numen’ refers to an immanent presence of aliveness or ‘soul’ that emerges from the silence of nature and is felt through the landscape, evoking states of serenity and the natural sublime. Over the last five years she has adapted aspects of fresco technique into working with oil, natural binders and raw pigment on a larger scale.
Returning repeatedly to the same motif across changing seasons, light and weather, her work enters into dialogue with Cézanne, Monet and the Impressionist idea of the artists ‘touch’ where prolonged observation transforms colour and light into rhythmic sensation, and painting becomes an act of embodied perception. The paintings become meditations on the surface as its own emergent consciousness where silence is used to quiet the noise of content, allowing the poetry of deep looking and feeling to overlap.
Madeleine's work is held in public, private and corporate collections worldwide including Emin International (UK), Parliament House (Canberra), Curwoods Law firm (Sydney), Holdsworth House Medical Center (Sydney). Her work is held in private collections across Europe, China, America, and Australia.
UPCOMING & SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026 - NUMEN solo exhibition, RCA London
2026 - Royal College of Art, Painting MFA Exhibition, London UK
2026 - Group exhibition, Siuruei Art, London
2026 - ‘A Painters Perspective’ dialogue with Art Historian & curator Antonia Crichton-Brown, ‘Waltja: One Family’ Exhibition, JGM Gallery, London UK
2025 - With The Light - Abstractions, Solo Exhibition, Purple Radish Space, Arles, France
2025 - Open studio, Festival du Dessin, Arles, France
2024 - White Noise, Monat Gallery, Madrid, Spain
2024 - Elements, group exhibition, Galerie InsideOut, Arles, France
2023 - Paysage Sacré II, Solo Exhibition, Galerie InsideOut, Arles, France
2023 - PRESENT PARTICIPLE 03, Loveart, Sydney, Australia
2023 - Dessins du Graphite / Graphite Drawings Collection, Gallery Inside out, Arles
2022 - Oil & Water II, Open Studios, Aix-en-Provence, France
2022 - Paysage Sacré / Sacred Landscape, Solo Exhibition, Atelier Des Abeilles, Marseille, France
2022 - OUTSIDE IN / Embodied Landscape, Atelier Des Abeilles, Marseille, France
2019 - We Are Nature / We Share The Weather, Nude Meets Nature series, Fondation Cartier ‘Nous Les Arbres’ Exhibition, Paris, France
2019 - Public Installation, We Are Nature / We Share The Weather, Nude Meets Nature series, Extinction Rebellion France, Paris
2019 - The Lost Lost Lost Cabaret, Comédie Dalayrac, Paris
2018 - CHROMA SUTRA, Solo Exhibition, Stirrup Gallery, Sydney, AU
2018 - Non Objective Painting, selected group exhibition, Gallery 9, Marickville, Sydney, AU
2017 - Oil & Water, Monster Mouse Studios, Sydney, AU
2017 - Deep Sea Dreaming, Nude Meets Nature series, The Art Of Shells, Potts Point Galleries, Sydney, AU
2016 - Permanent Water - Conversations in Colour & Ink, Solo Exhibition, Curwoods emerging artist award, Australia Square, Sydney, AU
2016 - Éco Burlesque Down Under, Perth Fringe World Festival, Perth, AU
2016 - Nude Meets Nature installation, Dr Sketchys Sydney, ArtHouse Hotel Galleries, Sydney, AU
2015 - Playground, Selected Group show, Gut Studios, Sydney, AU
2015 - The Other Art Fair, Sydney, AU
2015 - Young Artists Initiative, selected graduate show, M. Contemporary, Sydney, AU
2014 - Bodies In The Bush, Nude Meets Nature, Black Box, COFA, Sydney, AU
2014 - College of Fine Art (COFA) Annual - Kudos gallery, Sydney, AU
2013 - Contemporary Face, Satellite Installation, Sydney Contemporary, AU
2013 - Pleasure Dome, satellite performance, Architects of Air, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, AU
2013 - Ochre Lab, Fowlers Gap, Broken Hill, Greenhouse residency, AU
2013 - Nude meets Nature (performance & video installation), Fowlers Gap, Broken Hill, Greenhouse residency, AU
2013 - College of Fine Art (COFA) Annual - Kudos gallery, Sydney, AU
2013 - Acting Auditory - Kudos gallery, Sydney, AU
RESIDENCIES AND AWARDS
2020 - IAU Institutional award for professional and academic excellence, France
2020 - Deans scholarship award IAU, France
2016 - Recipient of the annual Curwoods Emerging Artist Studio Residency, Australia Square, Sydney
2014 - Young Artists Initiative, graduate award, M. Contemporary, Sydney
2013 - Greenhouse Residency, Fowlers Gap, Broken hill
PRESS & PUBLICATIONS
Kym Elphinstone, 2025, Collecting: Living with Art, Thames & Hudson, ISBN 1760764256, 9781760764258
World Of Interiors UK, January Issue, 2025, Condé Nast Publishing
British Vogue UK, Artist Showcase, February issue, 2025, Condé Nast Publishing
British Vogue UK, Artist Showcase, January issue, 2025, Condé Nast Publishing
Suboart International Emerging Artist Magazine, Issue 34, January, 2025
British Vogue UK, Artist Showcase, December issue, 2024, Condé Nast Publishing
Artist Close Up, Magazine, Vol. 11, Emerging Artists, 2023
Wentworth Courier, Young Artist Initiative awarded at M. Contemporary, 2014
COLLECTIONS
Madeleine's work is held in public, private and corporate collections worldwide including Emin International (UK), Parliament House (Canberra), Curwoods Law firm (Sydney), Holdsworth House Medical Center (Sydney). Her work is held in private collections across Europe, China, America, and Australia.
TEACHING & LECTURES
2025 - ‘Embodiment & Play’ Somatic Creativity Workshop Series, Royal College of Art, London UK
2025 - Antiquity & Van Gogh Highlights - History of Arles onsite lecture, San Jose Museum of Art
2025 - Cezanne & The Motif - Watercolour plein-aIr painting masterclass, Smithsonian Journeys, Aix-en-Provence, France
2023 - ‘The Tomb Of The Diver: The Only Surviving Painting from Ancient Greece ’ Context Scholar, online seminar
2023 - ‘Fresco & The Origins of Landscape Painting : The Garden of Livia at Prima Porta’ , Context Scholar online seminar
2022 - Ancient Fresco I, II & III lecture series, onsite lectures, Naples, Rome, Pompeii & Paestum, Italy, ACM Travel Abroad
2022 - Treasures of Pompeii: onsite lecture, Pompeii, Italy, ACM Travel Abroad
2022 - Early to Late Renaissance, in person lecture, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
2022 - Assistant professor, Studio Arts, ACM American College of the Mediterranean, Aix-en-Provence, France
2022 - Assistant professor, Art history, ACM American College of the Mediterranean, Aix-en-Provence, France
2016 - 2025 Private painting tuition, Sydney, Paris, Marseille