Madeleine Bialke, Nervous System, 2024; Original Painting

**These original works are available via private sale only. Please email hello@artforchange.com with your interest.

Madeleine Bialke is an artist whose paintings often depict trees in dreamlike, otherworldly settings. Based in London, she unifies her compositions with harmonious color palettes that lend an ethereal quality. Although human figures seldom make appearances within her works, their presence is nonetheless inferred—either through the inclusion of architectural structures or, more notably, the anthropomorphic qualities of the trees’ forms. Branches extend outward in a limb-like way, to emphasize the interconnectedness between people and nature. Born in New York and based in London, Bialke has presented solo exhibitions at venues that include Newchild Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium; Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London, United Kingdom; and Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Additionally, her work can be found in the collections of Beth Rudin deWoody, Miami, FL; Fundación MEDIANOCHE0, Granada, Spain; and Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Skeleton and Nervous System (both 2024) are inspired by trees that Bialke encountered in Epping Forest, an ancient woodland located north of London. The natural site was purchased by the City of London Corporation during the late nineteenth century, after local landowners began to make encroachments that threatened its ecology; this is widely considered to be the first major success of the environmental movement in Europe. Nervous System—an exploration of the ways in which energy affects the web-like ‘spine’ of a tree—plays on the contrast between light and shadow, while Skeleton depicts a bare tree illuminated against a dark, winter sky. Though divergent in composition, the two paintings share the use of frosty tones that transition from turquoise to mauve, and the conceptual emphasis on the interconnectedness between the human body and the natural world.

Madeleine Bialke
Nervous System, 2024
Oil on canvas
21.625 x 17.25 inches (55 x 45 cm)

With environmental conservation a central tenet of ART FOR CHANGE’s mission, the artists invited for this exhibition confront and contribute to the move toward sustainability by exploring nature and the environment through content, methods, inspiration, or process. In conjunction with the exhibition, ART FOR CHANGE and Phillips will plant 1,000 trees to help counter the CO2 emissions produced by the art industry.

For this collaboration between Phillips and ART FOR CHANGE, Bialke notes, “My work is about the climate crisis, and how it colors both the natural world and our internal landscapes. I think about how to approach a changing planet with both love and deep unease. My paintings are about the paradigm shift that is happening in the world, and our lived reality, for at least the past two hundred years, and how to give this existential crisis a language.”