Madison Stickler is a Milwaukee-based painter in her last semester at Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Art with a focus in Painting and Drawing. Stickler’s practice is centered around her interactions with the digital and physical worlds, where she aims to highlight the absurdity that comes with living in both. She has exhibited a painting in Ceci est une pipe: Pipelines from Z through X at Real Tinsel in Milwaukee, WI and has exhibited several times in the Union Art Gallery at UWM, including the 51st Annual Juried Show and Crossing Over 2025, where she also gave an artist talk. Stickler has also received multiple scholarships at UWM including the Laurence Rathsack Art Scholarship and the Rorabeck Memorial Scholarship. After finishing her degree, she plans to continue her studio practice while interning at Real Tinsel and saving up for graduate school. 

Her work is an exploration of the intersections between the digital world and the physical world. She compiles images from the Internet, like memes, and other visual language to represent the digital along with her own reference images to create compositions as a way to both insert her own self into the digital world and the digital world into her own life. The images collaged together form new contexts and meanings, making what’s “real” harder to decipher. She also explores outside of painting and drawing, using sculptural and technological elements mixed with these ideas to further find ways the bring the worlds together and play with reality.