Website: https://www.CMStudio.ca

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From 1965 to 1970 she studied oil painting in Vancouver, to be prepared for the day when her children would leave her on her own.

In 1970 they moved to Salt Spring Island where she applied her abilities to set, prop and costume design for 25 productions. She worked community groups, Madness Inc., w/actor/director Stuart Margolin's Summer Theatre, and original designs for operatic works produced by classical composer Joan Raeside. Madison joined the arts council, painter's guild,and began to exhibit and sell.

The moment the last child left home, Charlotte headed for California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to find and paint Franciscan Missions. She spent months camped in the desert with London, her Old English sheepdog, painting cactus, desert landscapes, stone quarrys and old rock doodlers.

G.B Madison drove into her life, she fell in love, then in l977, she and that wild ol' Okie boy married.

G.B scorned paint as a "playtoy" so he taught her to run his gas station on Route 66, do the quarry division payroll and keep his rental office records. In her "spare" time she lured this master of all he surveyed, this "goin' an' a-blowin', steamin', dumb ol' Okie boy," down a pathway to showbiz and art. Their adventures are recorded in a humerous trilogy entitled "Stone and Canvas" written by Charlotte Madison and her daughter, artist and author, Nana Cook.

In 1989 Madison and the Cook family moved and built log houses on Vancouver Island. For a month each year Charlotte, and Nana, painted in Arizona and New Mexico. Throughout the following year they added to this stack of paintings, with studio work that took sketches and starts from the trip, into finished paintings.

After years of stifleing art in favour of G.B.'s gas pumps and adding machines, Charlotte began her version of an exhibit. Under an arc of silence, like a volcano slowly building its dome, Charlotte with the permission of Ray and Virginia Newman, adapted script and lyrics of the musical "Salt Spring Madness" to the little Arizona mining town. She produced, designed costumes, painted sets, conducted workshops for propmakers, located directors, musicians and cast, all chosen from the five hundred townspeople, rock doodlers in the hills, and surrounding ranch families . . . who, for 16 months all kept the show a secret from G.B. "Eight weeks before opening night, I let something slip and in the shadow of volcanic cinder cones and malapai, G.B. exploded. Without that to worry about we moved into rehersal, Nana flew down to do makeup and G.B., surrounded by his children, proudly watched, astounded, as the cast of fifty from "his" little town, pulled in a standing room only audience for the Centennial musical production."

Co-exhibit,August 18 1983 "Stone and Canvas" with Pat "Big Deal" McNeill-Flagstaff Art Barn, Flagstaff Arizona. Madison painted from Aug 18 1982 until Nov. 7 1982, when, as a gasoline truck was loading storage under the stone yard building, her office exploded and she was burned.

By February she began to paint and still bandaged and painting in June, she had to add to her twenty-five pieces, an extra 15 paintings for "Big Deal" as he was stricken with congestive heart failure.

G.B. hired a framer, rented him a trailer, and set him to work, full time in her studio. Every day friends drove her into the hills where she could paint. The girls hunted pieces of multicoloured random shaped flagstone she could use in case she ran out of canvas. Madison met the quotas.

The gallery rated the exhibit and sales a "success".

Solo-exhibit, "Y'all Get T'Paintin' Charle" at the Old Building Gallery Arizona.

Co-exhibit,"Women on the Loose" with Nana Cook - Rogue's Gallery, Parksville, B.C.

Solo-exhibit, "Southwest Images" at The Dancing Bean Chemainus, B.C.

Co-exhibit Women on the Loose II - Three Generations - The Old Schoolhouse Fine Arts Centre. Qualicum B.C.

Over the years, gallery directors tell me where paintings are shipped but I have never bothered to asked for specific details that would allow me to compile lists of collectors or locations.

"Grand Canyon true stories of life below the rim."

Included in this Travelers' Tales Guide - "G.B. and the Ranger" written by Charlotte Madison and Nana Cook.

Illustrated Directory of Delta Artists Anniversary Edition 1969-1989

Madison conducted a workshop "Sets Props and Costumes on a Shoestring."

ARTFITTERZ FRAMING AND GALLERY 1925 Bowen Road Nanaimo B.C. 250-585-5506

Morgan A. Cook   Morgan Cook, an artist and daughter of artist, Nana Cook is the grandaughter of painter, Charlotte Madison.

Ganges Canada   

Wukoki Ruin   

Jack Darcus   

Beauty and Balance   on Blogger

True Desert Tales   G.B. and the Strange Canadian Painter Lady Humorous true tales

or Google Lisa Keeping   Lisa Keeping is another of my grandchildren who follows an artistic path. She is a make up artist in California. During the illness of my son, her father,Lee Keeping, she began to paint with Nana Cook and it has become a part of her life. Before long, she will join Nana and I as does Morgan Cook, to paint with us in the desert and one day join us in a family exhibit.