ARTIST BIO

Madison Zhao grew up in Bethesda, Maryland and is an undergraduate student at Rice University. She works primarily with acrylic paint, watercolor and charcoal but is expanding into digital design. She is fascinated by color and space and developed a series of paintings titled Street Series to explore the concepts of color and abstraction. Recently, Zhao uses her artwork as a means for social change. During the pandemic, she created watercolor designs to address the complexities of growing up in America as a Chinese American. Her select design $3,000 for a life? was granted the first place award in Montgomery County’s AAPI Heritage month poster contest. Additionally, she was nominated for Superintendent’s Fine Arts Award and has had pieces juried into Congressional Art competitions and exhibited in Rockville Visarts gallery.

Zhao is also interested in the intersection between art and medicine. She has partnered with the Youth Art for Healing non-profit to create comforting artworks to be displayed in hospitals and medical centers. Her past pieces have been displayed in Medstar Montgomery Medical Center, and Walter Reed Navy hospital. She continued to develop her interest by teaching watercolor lessons to Alzheimer’s patients at the Brookdale Olney senior home. Currently she is an artist and intern in the Medical, Race, Democracy lab where she creates hand drawn maps that plot community clinics against socio-economic datasets.