Describing herself as a “realist with a romantic eye,” art professor Madeline Rupard (BFA’16) paints in contradictions, finding the sacred in ordinary moments. In her new book, Passages, she documents the quiet beauty she finds while moving through the world.
Rupard’s inspiration for her painting Provo Glow came from her daily drive home from the Springville, Utah, charter school she was teaching at. Describing a Provo gas station she’d often pass at sunset, Rupert says “the light is just so beautiful behind it. Even when I didn’t need to go there,
I wished I did. It just felt like a little safe haven.” One day she pulled over to take a photo, capturing the moment to later translate onto canvas.
Jennifer Groves, a truck driver in southern Utah who often stops at convenience stores and gas stations along her route, felt at home looking at Rupard’s art. She reached out on social media to comment on another of Rupard’s gas station paintings: “The work you posted this morning felt very personal to me,” Groves wrote. Reflecting on her “physically demanding and often lonely job,” Groves was reminded through Rupard’s painting that “there is beauty in even the grind of my day-to-day tasks.”
“I believe one of art’s purposes is to help us feel connected,” Rupard says. She hopes those who enjoy her art will start seeing the overlooked corners of life as places of reverence and reflection.
