In Scissors, Donahue depicts herself painting in her studio while her two children simultaneously pull at her red dress and snip away oblong shapes from her clothing, inevitably awkwardly exposing her underwear and forcibly pulling her away from her work; yet her attention remains focused.

Madeline Donahue utilizes her own experiences to express wide-ranging universal physical and emotional experiences that accompany caring for another human. Through a lighthearted approach, she manages to paint the minute yet momentous milliseconds that make up the experience of motherhood. Snapshots of the mundane and the grotesque, the horrible and the wonderful, all imbued with a clear sense of time, both the lack of it and how quickly it seems to go by. Donahue further encapsulates the difficult emotional contradiction that comes from being a working parent; specifically, a working artist.

(written by Carlyn Wilder, 2024)