Selected Works
Biography
Margaret grew up in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago then went to Miami (of Ohio) University. Graduating with a degree in social work she worked with families and children in need before getting married and moving to St. Louis to raise her family. Artistically she began as a weaver and received her Masters of Fine Art in painting from Fontbonne University. Painting became her medium of expression and led her to founding Woodwalk Gallery in Door County in 1994. All her paintings begin in a real time and place but then she works and reworks the images with many layers until the paintings can be any time and any place. She is a recipient of the Door County Master Artist award, the Milwaukee Women’s Professional Dimensions Sacagewea Award, the Wisconsin Arts Association Trienial show in Madison and other awards and exhibits throughout the Midwest.
Artist Statement
I constantly desire to paint canvases that create the feeling of space. My tools are color relationships, layers of atmosphere and rhythmic interludes. I want each work to gently welcome viewers into a peaceful place within the painting and within themselves. The work sometimes begins with remembering our surrounding landscape on this beautiful peninsula or as a conversation with the marks and colors I have placed on the canvas. No matter how they are started, the real work comes in doing, while I am in the middle of it all, with the canvas covered and the spiritual nature of the work taking form. I am required to have trust on the unknown and yet-to-be, remaining open to change and chance along to way, but also to direct the creation.
In Door County, WI now living in the city of Sturgeon Bay, I have lived in the woods and then in a farmhouse with open fields all around. The work is overwhelmingly a response to my appreciation of the fragile beauty of those remembered trees and the peacefulness of fleeting light and color across the fields and in the clouds above. I responded to the atmosphere and the private spaces and moment still to be found in our environment and daily lives. I am concerned with the layers of connection between our external world and that of our inner worlds, and how we relate to and are informed by our precious environment, each other, as well as our hopes and memories. I want to make visible the mysterious atmosphere of landscapes and spaces within us, our spiritual homes.
Each of us is alone ultimately. Understanding this solitude may bring feelings of sadness but knowing that this is common to all of us can be profoundly reassuring. We can feel connected to our world if we notice. We can feel connected to those who are with us now, along with those who came before those who are yet to be, if we care. I hope there are some who can feel this mysterious yearning mixed with wonder in my work.