Reginald Madison (1941–2026)
SEPTEMBER Gallery and Uffner & Liu honor the life and legacy of American painter and sculptor Reginald Madison, who passed away on May 12, 2026, at the age of 85 in Hudson, New York.
Kristen Dodge, founder of SEPTEMBER Gallery, which represents Madison shares: “Reggie was a singular spirit — self-determined, endlessly curious, and full of energy. He moved through life with mischievous wit and improvisational zeal, a tune he carried into the studio. Reggie's paintings and sculptures hold the same qualities as the man himself: expressive, surprising, and deeply human. It is an honor to represent his work and a privilege to have known him. We remain fully committed to his legacy, and to ensuring his work reaches the wider audience it has always deserved.”
Born in Chicago in 1941, Madison emerged from the Black Arts Movement (1965–1975) as a self-taught artist whose path was defined by determination and an unwavering commitment to his practice. As a teenager, he discovered a discarded box of paints, an encounter that would spark a lifelong devotion to artmaking. He later worked at U.S. Steel South Works, taking on extra shifts to support his young family and to fund a formative year of travel in Europe, where he visited museums in Paris, Munich, and Madrid.
In 1968, Madison had his first public presentation at Art & Soul in Chicago, where he was awarded third place in a competition juried by artist Richard Hunt and curator Jan van der Marck, founding director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. This early recognition affirmed his artistic direction and led him to continue his practice across New York City and Western Massachusetts, before ultimately settling in Hudson, New York, where he lived and worked.
Madison’s paintings are vibrant and improvisational, echoing the free-form jazz that shaped his sensibility. He developed a distinctive palette of bold color—lime greens, salmon pinks, and bright blues—which he softened into earthy, matte tones, as Madison famously abhorred sheen. He achieved highly-textured canvases and panels with an array of tools, from rags to the palms of his hands to brushes, with colors often mixed directly on the studio walls. In a 2011 interview, he remarked: “If you say ‘what’s your ancestry?’, I say—Charlie Parker. That’s my ancestor.”
About the Artist
Reginald Madison (b. 1941, Chicago, IL; d. 2026, Hudson, NY) studied independently in Paris, Venice, and Copenhagen in the 60’s. After moving to Western Massachusetts in the 70’s, Madison was represented by Phyllis Kind Gallery. After decades of working in relative obscurity, Madison held a solo exhibition at SEPTEMBER Gallery in Hudson, NY in 2021, shortly followed by his first New York solo exhibition at Rachel Uffner Gallery in 2024. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY (2025, 2022); False Flag Gallery, Long Island City, NY (2021); SEPTEMBER Gallery, Hudson, NY (2021); The Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, IL (2018); and Shelnutt Gallery, Troy, NY (2018) and the historic pop up exhibition, Art and Soul, juried by Richard Hunt (1970).
Madison’s work is included in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Miami, FL; and the University of Santa Barbara Art, Design & Architecture Museum, Santa Barbara, CA. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, and has been included in “Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975”, Duke University Press, and “The Time Is Now! Art World’s of Chicago’s South Side, 1960-1980”, The University of Chicago Press.
