Madolin Maxey was born in Papenoo, Tahiti, and raised in Vanuatu where she learned to make baskets of fish bones and pandanus leaves. When she was age eight, her family set sail for New Guinea and Samoa where they began a study of the Indonesian rhino. As a teen-ager, Madolin took off alone to sketch seashells and sea snakes near Osakikami-shima in the Sea of Japan. Winters were spent working on a Maui flower farm on the slopes of Haleakala volcano in the Hawaiian Islands.

Her wanderings took her south in search of the Giant Squid in the waters of New Zealand and west to Africa in search of wild apes and pygmy elephants. She has spent countless years sailing among the blue whales off the coast of Baha California. She married a European scientist specializing in Fluid Flows and produced an interesting and beautiful daughter.

It is difficult to determine the accuracy of these facts, but we do know Madolin Maxey spent much of her youth in Washington, DC, with long weekends exploring the halls of the Smithsonian Institution museums and was indeed named after her grandmother, Madolin Smithson. Her adult life finds her revisiting the actual lands of her imagination and returning with stories told through painting and sculpture.