As we gathered around the works in Madelyn Kellum’s studio for our first IRL studio visit and interview in a few years, it was apparent that there was sheer reverence for “imagery”—from Rae Sremmurd-in-embrace to Medieval tapestries at the Met Cloisters to the theatricality of My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.

Kellum’s work approaches what is strange and familiar through an intuitive approach to artmaking that doesn’t exactly resist narrative but sidesteps it. It’s fitting, then, that what Kellum makes in her home and studio in Brooklyn pulls directly from scenes or images in her own life. Whether derived specifically from her native South Florida, New York City, dreams, literature, or what’s seen on our social media feeds, it is unclear and ultimately doesn’t matter much.

Peering into Kellum’s canvases reveals that many of the seemingly abstract marks in the paintings are derived by linoleum blocks stamped in gesso or reference images sublimation printed directly onto the canvas, which often function as the formal basis for their representational content. The paintings, sculptures, and drawings are a condensation of images, emotional textures and form—from places and things known and unknown.

You said it's leaving on the 27th?

Yeah, I just need to stretch it. It’s going to be part of an apartment show on August 3rd. I’ll send you the details!

I noticed you did a couple of shows at a mausoleum in California?

These shows were special… Dignity Plus and Continental Breakfast. It's this beautiful mausoleum complex in Altadena, with stained glass windows and marble corridors. It was my first time being part of a show that was thematically attached to the space itself, which was really cool.

Did you make specific works for these shows?

Yes, these were conscious choices. The painting called Harmonica was about mourning and solitude, and just happened to sync up with the show in a way that I felt was perfect. Saint Michael Slaying the Demon was a year-old piece that I reworked to be shown here, based on Saint Michael with a focus on the demon morphing into two intertwined ones.

Are religious or iconographic figures and themes in your head while you work?

It’s all across the board. I have instant visceral responses to images before I know what makes them so special to me. I try to spend enough quality time with one of those images to uncover the truth about it in a patient and thorough way. I’ll have moments of clarity like, “Oh! This says everything to me about my life.” I can finally place this desaturated photo of Dobby’s beach death scene on my personal timeline of emotion. And it holds more weight than a bible story.

That can sometimes take a year or two for me to figure out, though. Pictures become muddy after you drag them around with you for so long. While I work, my biggest concern is being present and truthful. That’s my measure of value.

Yes.

I visit the Met Cloisters often, and am so taken by their insane collection of South Netherlandish tapestries. Standing in front of one and being totally consumed by it is an important feeling to me. I want to be the bestower of this feeling—that’s what I was thinking about with the size and format of this.

I had also come across these photos of little capuchin monkeys riding greyhounds in Australia in the 30s. A vague image of a bodybuilder riding a greyhound started popping into my head that wanted to be expelled onto something life-size. I'm so into mutated figures, dilated eyes, body builders, reptile shapeshifters. I think I realized this after watching Harmony Korine’s Aggro Dr1ft [2023].

I saw that there’s a painting show of those works up now. That reminds me of your body armor work, which seems to stretch and re-form the limits of the human body.

That’s a very real connection. Those silicone pieces are HR Giger inspired, very alien. I have fun making something that can interact with the body and have more physical involvement. Painting is my favorite practice right now, and these sculpture projects inform my paintings. 

Where is that structure up in the right corner coming from? 

In my hometown, there is a greyhound track that was just demolished—I used those photos as a reference. When I used to drive past it in the early morning, this silver fog was sometimes spread across the field. It was beautiful, and sinister.

When you initially approach a painting, where do you start? Do you have a composition in mind, or are you thinking about the layers?

I start by carving delicate natural patterns into linoleum blocks. Then I press those into heavy gesso, pretty freely. You can see, it’s pretty thick right here. I let that random placement guide my composition, and use a giant trowel to move my first layers around. Lots of paint being placed, dug into, and placed again. I usually have a few details that I won’t be satisfied without, but mostly let the painting make its own decisions.

Olivia, doesn’t this remind you of the flesh wall in New Mexico?

Oh yeah. We went to New Mexico on a road trip and we were staying in this Airbnb ranch with Adobe clay walls. We were all tripping on mushrooms, and at one point it felt like we were in a ship or cavern made out of flesh walls. I wasn’t trying to freak everyone out, so I felt like I couldn’t tell everyone, but I had to tell somebody what was going on. 

Have you seen Videodrome [1983]?

I've never seen it all the way through and I don’t want to, because I have early memories of seeing images from it somehow and those still really scare me. So, in these films the body is an object, or something at an extreme, which I see in relation to that figure of the body builder.

Yeah, totally. Sci-fi and fantasy films impact everything I’m working on right now. Although music probably has the biggest influence on me.

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance is my top album of all time, and has probably increased my adrenaline capacity over the years. It’s about fleshing out these artificial worlds with this pulsating conviction. Their war imagery has been on my mind all the time recently.

It’s so theatrical. 

Yes, that’s a huge part of it. I love over-the-top drama and theatrics in artworks, and usually prefer when it's coming from a peaceful place, if that makes sense. I learned recently that Gerard Way was freestyling a lot of those lyrics. I hold Bladee in high regard for these reasons as well.

Can you describe the elements in the work here a little bit [The Rime of the Mariner, 2024]? There’s something very elemental that you’re getting at with the moodiness of the work, it feels almost like a dreamscape, it’s very visceral and enveloping, like fog. I was reading the poem earlier today. The narrator describes this dense fog that comes along, and how the albatross clears it up—like the Florida fog in [Greyhound Jockey]! 

I was thinking about loss and consequence, and wanted this hazy, muddy, deep trench feeling to show up in its own ways. Something dense and harrowing.

Loosely, it’s a girl at the beach in a bikini, with a hat that doubles as a helmet, and with a gun strapped to her back. I started abstractly with no plan. I was halfway through when I found out about “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and then it fell into place. The texture is important to me in this one.

In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” someone is telling a story about someone telling a story, and the narrative goes back and forth between these states. Do you feel like your work encompasses storytelling?

No, not in any super conscious or directed way, I enjoy keeping things open. The narrative changes in my own head, depending on the day.

Can we look at the work behind this [Can’t Live With it, Can’t Live Without it (Should’ve Stayed in the Water), 2022]?

This is the earliest work I have here.

How do you think your style and approach has changed since this work?

With this one, I was learning how to come up with a composition and do everything I wanted to do. After this, I became free. I still really like this painting.

It feels like this one maybe has a little bit more specificity than your newer work. It seems that you’ve opened up since; the layers aren't quite as distinct from each other. The alligator is speaking to me. 

I wanted it to feel like a cursed gas station at night in the Florida Everglades. It’s based on a personal experience.

You were in New York when you painted this right?

Yeah.

Yes.

“My earliest oil paintings were studies from kayaks, or sitting across from the fishermen at the dam…”

Growing up near the swamp, do you feel like the environment itself impacted the way that the paintings are not necessarily swampy, but porous?

Absolutely, it seeps into everything. These colors and textures come from the rivers and beaches in Florida. My earliest oil paintings were studies from kayaks, or sitting across from the fishermen at the dam… things of that nature.

This one's called Apple Shooter [2024]. It's the Rae Sremmurd guys tied to a tree with arrows in their chests and an apple between their heads. This painting over here [Miracle Deer, 2024] came right after it, and I was thinking of this figure as the archer of the previous painting.

Are those grommets on the pocket?

Yeah, I try to have a few anchor points in the work where you can actually tell what it is.

Were you looking at any specific artworks while you were working on this? 

I was looking at Bonnard. My color ideas came from this sensitive detail of a woman slipping her shoe on.

So there’s the Lana del Rey image in one of the paintings [Cece and Rocky and Glory and Shame, 2023], there’s the Mariner painting, and Rae Sremmurd, how do these icons fit into your process as you're building something?

These are things that come up as I go. It's important for me to make sure everything is existing in the same world, things that might be abrasive on their own or have a defined visual aesthetic already. I am breaking them down until they are malleable enough for my own purposes.

You do it well—it doesn’t feel like it’s direct portraiture, there's something about it that is pulling through. What are these reference images on the wall?

I start collecting material for a new project usually when I’m still in the middle of the previous project. These are insect wings from a photo I took at the Natural History Museum, made into a baseball cap. This is a graphite drawing from a column at the Met Cloisters. This is a Photoshop composite I made of five rockabilly guys. Bret Michaels, Criss Angel, Dave Navarro, and I'm forgetting who else. 

You also made a Kim Kardashian dress.

Yes, those were part of my reptile shapeshifter prints. Maybe that will make a comeback soon. That goes back to the conversation about the extremes and limits of the body.

Plastic surgery, really, is stretching the limits. Today I was trying to explain Blade Runner [1982] to my roommate, have you seen it? It seems like that transhuman concept really comes in here.

Yeah! Best movie and soundtrack ever. Have you been to the Museum of the Moving Image?

No.

They have the original model of the Tyrell Corporation building. You have to go. The lights don’t work anymore, but you can see all the wiring in the back.

Can you talk about what you’re playing with here? [referring to a work in progress]

Oh, yeah, that's a part of my process that I haven't talked about. I’ll print patterns with a sublimation printer that I have, and heat transfer them onto the canvas before I start. This one has it [Apple Shooter, 2024]. I made a motif in Photoshop, and then printed it in a sequence across the entire thing. That's how I found the structure. I spaced them out evenly, and then spread gesso on top for texture.

Apple Shooter, 2024
oil on canvas, 50 x 50 inches

Do you still do work like this one, in pencil? [Secret Growing, 2022]

I’m about to. You can get detail from pencil in a way you can’t with painting.

Last summer, I went to this weird museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, and there's this Beaufort Delaney [Untitled, 1959] that this painting really reminds me of.

Yes, oh my gosh, that’s gorgeous.

It also reminds me of spiritual painting, like Agatha Wojciechowsky, where a medium works to translate a spirit through them.

That’s happened to me one time, and I've been searching for it since. I had been alone for a week, painting, and something took over me. It was a wild experience, I started sobbing.

This work feels like it’s about lust. [Cece and Rocky and Glory and Shame, 2023]

With this one, I was really thinking about girlhood.

That’s completely it. A mesh hologram fossilized with ancient secrets.

Then you get this part that looks almost like roots or lightning. There’s something even fungal about it.

Yes, these exposed nerve system wings that aren't actually going to support her weight.

What would you say is something that has stayed consistent from your earlier work to now, thematically?

Florida landscapes.

I’m very drawn to earthy colors. Recently I’ve been listening to this duo Jockstrap, and their music feels so fresh in a way that I can’t describe, and I was like, I need that freshness in my painting. So I tried to push myself with neon yellows and cool grays [Greyhound Jockey, 2024]... which eventually shifted back into my familiar palette. I don’t think it can be helped.

Do you have any plans for the coming months, years?

I want to keep painting forever. That is so fulfilling to me. I've recently discovered the joys of sharing my work in person as well, which adds a new dimension to it all. I will be staying in New York for the foreseeable future, and showing my work frequently.