Madeline’s Work
Here we have Madeline Joy, the resident artist at the gallery – i.e. me! I joined BHP Collectibles in April of 2022 after completing university. I walked in, handed in my CV, talked to some fellow artists and the gallery mentor and somehow got my dream job!
Madeline Joy is our resident artist, who joined our team in April 2022. Madeline has been an artist for almost a decade, and her passion for the arts started in college, where she discovered her love for painting. Her hard work and dedication paid off, winning her the coveted “student of the year” award within just two years of starting her art education. Since then, she has entered numerous exhibitions, and her work was featured in a six-month exhibition in Lisbon, Portugal, at the Fabrica Braco de Prata, curated by international curator and BBC Presenter Diana Ali.
Madeline has also set up a dedicated section within our gallery to support local artists from Birmingham, showcasing a selection of beautiful oil paintings, vibrant lino prints, magnificent pointillism, and more. We encourage you to visit our gallery regularly and keep up to date with the artworks Madeline has persuaded the director to put up on display. If you are a local artist interested in showcasing your work at our gallery, please feel free to contact Madeline at ml@bhpcollectibles.com to set up a meeting and show us what you’ve been working on.
Please take a moment to check out Madeline’s artwork, featured below.

“Dappled Light was based on a period of lost vision. I lost sight due to issues I knew were only temporary, but would last two weeks.
Without being able to see, it felt like I had no control over my life. My mind felt as blurry as my eyes, and my memory of those two weeks isn’t great. One thing I held onto was the light pushing its way through the forest trees.
It danced and flickered, changing colour every moment I looked at it. It was breathtaking.
I wanted to find a way to capture its magnificence. I ended up creating a collage filled with thousands of dots from magazines. Once created, I started to play with it digitally, and the artwork seemed to unfold in front of me. Finally, I had composed what I saw in the forest.”
“Breathe was created through the chaos. Watercolours were thrown down and splattered. There was no order to the initial layout. It was about creating a mess, getting the chaotic energy out of my head and turning it into something else.
I spent months staring at the piece, unsure where to take it. Was it just chaos destined never to go anywhere? Could I make something out of it? Suddenly, I knew I wanted to turn it into bubbles. Or water droplets? I still haven’t decided what they are. But I knew what I wanted to do.
Over a month, I spent hours every day carefully painting over the watercolour with acrylic paint and a tiny paintbrush. I had to be careful when painting so my hands didn’t shake.
It was mindful. I was so focused on my breathing I didn’t even think. It was all my breath, the piece itself and the music playing in the background. The peace of this creation leads to its name – Breathe.”