When Madison Safer was a child, she could often be found outdoors exploring the small worlds found under rocks in her back yard. 

When her family moved to a small town in New Hampshire, she was delighted by the tall pine trees and ferns growing everywhere.  Since it was hard to capture what she saw in photographs, she used watercolors to keep a record of what was around her.

And so it began – painting as a study tool – diagrams and sketches of bugs, mushrooms, flowers and plants. While studying at the Montserrat College of Art, she became interested in the narrative style of illustration. This enabled her to not only replicate natural phenomenon, but to convey the sensations of what it was like to be in the woods on the page.

Since then, she has used illustration as a teaching practice for herself as well as a way of telling hidden stories of what really happens in the forest when humans are not looking.

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