Madeline Weste

Taking Aim

oil on canvas. 36" x 54". 2019

Extinction Dream (2 of 6)

oil on board. 12" x 12". 2012

Reflection Story

oil on canvas. 24" x 36". 2012

Born in Sacramento CA in 1986, Madeline Weste is the product of an environmental chemist and a Mormon religious fanatic turned astrologer. She was raised in a Waldorf school where she didn't learn to read until she was eight years old. In Madeline's teens, her mother took over a metaphysical bookstore in town, exposing the young, impressionable Madeline to psychics, astrologers, energy healers, tarot readers, palm readers, aura imaging technicians, people who claimed to make contact with aliens, astrocartographers, and aspiring breatharians. She also failed briefly as a teen fashion model for an agency in San Fransisco.

Madeline studied traditional oil painting at the University of Redlands and in Cortona, Italy. After graduation, Madeline lived in Seattle where she taught art, apprenticed with a master gilder, and illustrated a full-color graphic novel in watercolor called The Adventures of Whaley and Birdface.

Madeline moved to Brooklyn in 2012 without having visited the East Coast but figured she was pretty adaptable, so why not? She found work as lead artist's assistant to the sculptor Paul Villinski for nearly four years until she married a trust funder in 2015 and decided she could get away with just partying and painting in their baller Clinton Hill loft apartment. Upon discovering her husband's secret heroin addiction and the decimation of their finances, Madeline moved out and made a living in antique jewelry for a while, finally moving into making art full time after being stranded at a tiny California coast surf pad for the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. She has since moved to Los Angeles where she paints constantly and is very good at living on next to nothing. Visit her at her website and on social media @madelineweste