Gallery — Madison Dankocsik

Batuque $1650 Batuque, or drumming, is a general term for various Afro-Brazilian practices including music, dance, combat and religion. It’s also significant as a symbol of resilience, a tool for social change. It’s not merely drumming - it's a summoning. A call & response, a mesmerizing rotation. Batuque drumming emerged as a form of creative defiance. The women who created these sounds refused to be silenced by colonial authorities and transformed their own bodies and voices into powerful percussive sections. Over and over while I was painting this I kept thinking of thrumming wings and all the music we hear - what is this body for if not for dancing?

Crest $1450 Okay dawn patrol energy! The sirens are wailing! To me this painting feels like a battle cry. A surge. I kept wondering what is behind the wave after it comes crashing down and I wasn’t afraid of what I would see when I popped my head back up from under the water. I felt exhilarated.

Travelin’ Man $1200 When you lose the lake, the water, the fish - what next? When I was painting this I thought a lot about biodiversity loss and losing your home/habitat due to ecosystem collapse and having to take off/travel to find shelter, food and clean water. How lucky for birds that they just get to fly somewhere new. How devastating for birds that they are losing their way of life due to human encroachment. How illuminating to realize the parallels between human and bird migration due to loss. How cool to realize that it’s never too late to change and preserve homes, help others experiencing loss, and not be assholes.

Vagus $875 Vegas really creeps me out. All that iniquity, depleting the water table. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that people spend that much energy (money) there … spending enough so that pausing the slot machines and contributing just one night of collective funds could solve so many problems - like housing the homeless or feeding kids a school lunch made of real food. Being there, in Vegas, made me feel so jangled and wrong. In contrast, when I sit in the rainforest surrounded by birds and life and flitty bugs and broad leaves and breathing tree bark … my vagus nerve is completely at peace. All I want to do in my life is protect the forests that give us all our life and oxygen. Easy ways to do this are by supporting indigenous land rights. Changing your consumer habits. Reduce meat and palm oil consumption (why tf are peanut butter companies putting palm oil in peanut butter! Is it really too hard for people to just flip the jar over and stir?! Madness!)

Golden Ratio $1100 The golden ratio (1.618 to 1) is touted as the fundamental blueprint for balance, beauty, and cosmic order. The ratio is also purported as a signature for divine design in the universe, linking it to natural order and is often used as an explanation to the creation of patterns found in spirals, growth and galaxies. But you know what? We as humans made up numbers and math and formulas so you can’t really apply it to anything concrete. Do you know what *is* cosmic balance, beauty and concrete real truth though? A clean ocean. Clean from oil, from garbage, from chemicals.

Red Rock On Top $1050 It is said that red rock sites with higher elevations help individuals in meditation to embrace a wider, expansive mindset that encompasses more of the universe. In contrast, lower elevation spots like canyons and caves encourage introspection. I’ve had some wild ass thoughts in both places. How cool that we, as bipedal humans, are able and lucky enough to experience both environments and all the thoughts that accompany.

Vacancy $1300 The compulsion to fill an empty space is a societal problem. Sometimes space is exactly what you need. Breathing room. Time to think. A horizon to get lost in. Why are we so keen to rush and fill and cram with concrete and noise solely to ease our own imposed, urgent anxiety? To sit with nothingness instead of frantically pursuing relentless stimulation is an act of rebellion. We don’t need to fill every void - we just need to be okay with stillness.

Respect Yo Mother $650 If babies/children came from a magical portal/gate/cave/etc that place would be considered so damn sacred and holy! We would protect the site. We would celebrate the site. We would respect and honor the site - the site that gives us life and future generations and beauty and wonder. Why then, do we treat women differently than how we would treat this imaginary hypothetical site? And why, most of all, do we treat the Earth - the ultimate portal of life to all- worst of all?

Ripple $850 The ripple effect is an abstract metaphor to describe how our actions (or non-actions) reverberate throughout the physical and social world. This painting makes me feel really aware of how many times I’ve said something I didn’t really mean in anger or frustration or how many times I was quiet when I needed to say something desperately and I never want anyone to edit themselves and always speak their truth and be honest even when it’s really hard and to always say what you mean and say it with your chest because you never know if you’re going to get to say I love you one more time. We’re human and we can create the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard, sounds that make us weep and drop some ass on the dance floor and how could we ever want to blur out those sounds with propaganda and bullshit?

No Maize $375 Did you know that our entire human existence depends on about 6 inch layers of topsoil?The minimum time required for the formation of one inch of topsoil is generally estimated to be about 100 to 500 years, with 500 years being a widely accepted standard average And we’re just spraying those current dwindling 6 inches with glyphosate and fake ass chemical fertilizers and planting monoculture crops and eliminating biodiversity one tract of razed land at a time? You know what we need instead? More biodiversity. Chemical free food. Bugs being allowed to be bugs, buzzing and pollinating. Composting! Why are we wrapping potential soil in scented plastic bags and throwing it away in a landfill with other nonbiodegradable plastic crap that then eventually gets covered with concrete? Madness. We need to always be supporting local farms growing diverse real food. A circular farm economy with no till soil that can easily feed the community. Fight back at the Monsanto Machine ™ with your wallet and make it rain on your local farmers. Gotta plug the local RI farms doing exactly that - looking @ you Mission Farm, Wild Harmony Farm, and many others.

Where The Fish Danced $850 You will never convince me that a trim grass yard is anything short of peak psychopath. It reminds me of a drill sergeant crew cut. Having a yard that you clear cut, spray with chemicals, actively work to eliminate biodiversity and celebrate a bald patch of nothingness is actually insane. Why would you want that? Not only is it an archaic symbol of bygone fiefdom status - lawn chemicals, agricultural fertilizers, herbicides leaching into local waterways are the leading cause of algae blooms which lead to the poisoning of shellfish and fish (which leads to severe health effects when consumed!) hypoxia in the water, massive fish die offs which then create a chain reaction disrupting all ecosystems. The solution? If you can’t curb the lawn enthusiasm, at least use phosphorus free products. Make sure your septic system isn’t leaking into the water systems. Plant buffer zones of native plants alongside waterways. Support policies that restrict phosphorus in fertilizers. But maybe just have a yard full of life and flowers and beauty - weeds are what’s up. Hello my name is Dr. Greenthumb.

Neighborhood Watch NFS - available to win in a raffle here, on August 11th! I don’t believe in being a narc. Except when people are littering. Like what do you mean you’re just going to throw something out of your car window? What do you mean you’re going to throw a bag of plastic trash over the side of your boat into the ocean? Straight to jail. It’s like the weird ostrich head sand thing, like if you can’t see the trash you littered anymore then you didn’t really do it mentality? Whack. When I was painting this, I kept thinking about how one moves through the world when you think nobody is watching. If nature regularly made eye contact with us, I bet you would think twice before doing half the shit we as humans do. Do you think we would be blasting through mountains if all the rocks had voices? Do you think we would continue deforestation of the world's forests if the Oak looked you dead in your eye as you revved up the bulldozer? What would the world be like if we acted as if everything is paying attention to what we are doing as a species? Because I actually think that everything is watching. And keeping tabs okay! All proceeds from the raffle of this painting will be donated to ORCA (Ocean Recovery Cleanup Alliance). ORCA was created by Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery (CCAR), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting recovery from alcohol and other drug addictions through advocacy, education, and service. ORCA brings communities together in a shared mission of environmental stewardship, organizing beach cleanups and other conservation efforts that are open to everyone. By combining service with sustainability, ORCA provides an opportunity for individuals from all backgrounds to give back, protect natural spaces, and foster a sense of unity through action.

madison dankocsik