Madelyn Covey’s artwork largely focuses on people and how they perform aspects of their identities or inner selves. She has always loved painting portraits of her friends, community members, and pop culture obsessions, using housemates, folks dressed up at comic book conventions, celebrities, and screencaps of TV shows as subject matter. Covey finds that the meditation on the subjects’ features and body language is a way for her to feel connected to them, and in that way more connected to the world.

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The paintings in Intimate Nature represent two bodies of work: The portraits are part of a current series called “Friends & Lovers”, that reflects on domesticity and intimacy as Covey evaluates her life’s trajectory by painting lovers, close friends, and her friend’s children. In “Women Have Leg Hair”, a the series of small paintings, Covey seeks to confront societal norms about women’s body hair, particularly leg hair. By painting her own leg hair, and images of the leg hair of female friends and acquaintances, she hopes to normalize visible body hair both for herself, and work towards normalizing it on a broader scale.

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Madelyn Covey is a Richmond, CA-based artist working primarily in painting and drawing. She was born in Sacramento, CA, and has been an East Bay resident since 2005. She received her MFA in Fine Arts from Mills College in 2012, and her BA from UC Berkeley in 2008. She currently facilitates painting and drawing at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, as well as their Saturday Youth Program.