David Madzo is a Minneapolis artist originally from North Dakota. Born in 1954, he grew up on a ranch in Medora, North Dakota, in a German immigrant community. About it he says, “I’m from a divided household: German Catholic and agnostic. We call it renegade Catholic. This blended background continues to surface in his painting today.

Madzo, a voracious reader of contemporary fiction, is attracted to the 15^th and 16^th century mystical realists. He is also drawn to the turn-of-the-century painters who specialized in social and Christian symbolism. Given the artist’s entanglement with myth and mysticism, archetypes such as the hermit, the fool, the monkey, the searcher, the martyr, and the winged woman dominate his paintings.