This spring, HEDGE is thrilled to present Things That Ache Softly, an exhilarating three person painting exhibition featuring Maeve Billings, Madison Mayle and Katy Richards.

The artists take inspiration from the natural world, using imagery of botanical forms, landscape and animal flesh. Using this combined symbolism, and themes of intimacy, impermanence and vulnerability, their work reflects conditions from lived and corporeal experiences.

Billings, who paints lush images of contemporary memento mori, wants their work to help viewers reflect on their bodies and what it means to be alive. Maeve shares, “To be a queer, non-binary person today means to feel a threat to autonomy over my own flesh. My paintings explore this anxiety. I want the paintings to be beautiful, and, in the same breath, unsettle the viewer with imagery ranging from reverent to gory. I am interested in that fragile dynamic between attraction and repulsion.”

Mayle’s paintings are informed by her upbringing in Appalachia and use reimagined botanical forms that function as a rhythm and atmosphere rather than depicting specific places. Madison states, “The work communicates a sense of quietude and inherited intimacy, where the landscape is not something observed from afar, but something that holds, shapes, and embodies the viewer.”

Richards’ recent oil and watercolor paintings serve as a visual meditation for the ephemeral nature of life, inviting viewers to consider the impermanence of their own lived experiences. Floral bouquets in various stages of wilting and decay are her subject matters, imitating life’s continual balancing act of holding on and letting go. “Through their gradual decay, they encourage us to value the moments we have, finding beauty in the continuous process of transformation, loss, and renewal.”

Billings, Mayle and Richards depict their ideas using personal experiences and notions that invite viewers into alluring, painterly motifs of fleeting beauty, fantastical forms and gore.