Los Angeles artist Susan Maddux uses meticulous folding to transform paintings into sculpture, creating wall pieces that range in size from twelve inches to seven feet tall and come off the wall from two to six inches.

 Each piece is made from numerous individual acrylic on canvas paintings that are folded and formed into a single piece. Canvas is painted, folded, and unfolded many times in the process of experimenting and searching for the proportions and patterning of the final form. 

Maddux is a 4th generation hapa-Japanese born and raised in Hawaii with stints on the continent growing up, and this work explores reconnection with personal history and place through the transformation of material. 

The landscape and lush abundance of Hawaii has a strong influence over her use of color, and her process makes a connection with generations of women before her through the ritual of gesture: Smoothing, folding, shaking out cloth. Repetition. Accumulation. Veneration. Reflection. 

Maddux received a fine art degree in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, and worked professionally as a surface pattern designer in New York for many years. Her work as a designer gave her a unique perspective on her painting, and while searching for a way to engage more emotionally with her work she found a tactile connection and began creating powerful work by gently folding paintings that are mirror images in repeat. 

As these pieces get larger they reveal an anthropomorphic quality, and creating a physically resonant connection with the viewer and transformative spaces for meditation and the imagination is central to the intention for this work. 

Susan Maddux (b. Honolulu, Hawaii) is a Los Angeles based artist working in sculpture, collage and painting. 

She received a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her current work transforms paintings into wall sculptures using origami-influenced folding and collage. A former surface and textile pattern designer, Maddux developed this unique form out of a search for deep spiritual connection with her work through touch and physicality. 

Her recent exhibitions include solo installations at Not There Gallery, Los Angeles (2024), the Los Angeles Design Festival (2019, 2023), Arts and Letters Nu’uanu, Honolulu (2022) and and group exhibitions at the Rhett Baruch Gallery, Los Angeles (2023), Idolwild Gallery, Los Angeles (2023), Vetri gallery, Seattle (2023) and Upon Further Reflection in New York for NYCxDesign (2023).