Madonna Phillips

The Center Will Hold

2025

Madonna Phillips is a glass and mixed media artist who lives and works in North Carolina. Primarily a self-taught artist, she has worked with stained glass, painting, fibers, crafts and sculptural assemblage. She reinvented her approach to glass, creating her technique, combining all her previous experience in diverse mixed media. She cites a connection to Alastair Sooke’s quote in his review "Beauty has made a comeback for Richard Wright’s Turner prize-winning gold leaf painting, “It is only natural when we feel surrounded by darkness and chaos that we yearn for things that are luminous and orderly or to put it another way, beautiful." Phillips’s work addresses physics, the environment, time and the power of light and reflection. Phillip's original art technique in glass and mixed media developed after studying with a master stained glass painter and experimentation. She is inspired by the qualities of glass and its relationship to design, architecture, science and the connections between art and design. Phillips's starting point is usually collages from found materials. These materials are layered and painted, hand-cut pieces of glass are reverse painted and applied to the surface. Around each piece of glass, she pours a clear medium to fuse the piece. The result is a shimmering surface with constantly changing reflection as the viewer passes by.