Artists

Reginald Madison was born in Chicago, Illinois. Greatly influenced by the pulsating music and the entire "art scene" in that great city, his first job was in the steel industry as a crane operator. He says, "I was able to sketch from my cab high up in my city of Chicago which, as an artist, enabled me to join its burgeoning art scene.”

He was greatly influenced by trips to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1970, he was invited to participate in an art show in a downtown storefront. Currently, those shows are referred to as 'Pop - Up’.  That show, titled "Art and Soul, Contemporary Black Chicago Artists” established downtown Chicago as an emerging arts scene in the United States and Reggie Madison rolled along with it.

Madison went on to travel and study art independently in the early 1970’s in Paris, Venice and Copenhagen. Shortly after he moved to a Greenwich Village studio in New York City where he remained for several years.  For a number of years Reggie was a mainstay artist in the town of Housatonic, Massachusetts where he regularly participated in the art scene happening there.  He eventually relocated to downtown Hudson, NY.

In Hudson, he has shown at the Carrie Haddad Gallery and the John Davis Gallery, both on Hudson's famous Warren Street. His paintings can be enjoyed at Club Helsinki, a venerable music club and performance space in Hudson, New York, formerly of Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Reginald Madison was heralded In a New York Times art review of a show in Great Neck, NY - praising his paintings as "chief among the discoveries of 1992's Contemporary Black Artists." 'His paintings are bold and direct, using bright almost garish color and agitated form to highlight the emotional intensity of his subject.’

Madison’s work draws heavily on autobiographical themes developing a more fluid painterly style with roots in abstract expressionism. Madison says, "All works are 'acts of faith' and they all began with the first stroke."