MARGOT WALLER MADGETT

Margot Waller Madgett is a painter, sculptor, photographer and mixed media artist.  Within the complex dichotomy of daily life, Margot seeks to balance serenity within the hectic pace of contemporary culture.  Margot's paintings are intimate, introspective expressions that convey eloquence, a quiet refinement of color and maturity of expression, while maintaining a sense of intrigue. Searching for permanence and substance beyond our daily lives, she uses everyday sights as visual cues in her paintings, at times incorporating birds, symbols, and organic forms as subject matter for pieces that often beg the question: object or symbol? There exists in her work a simple, undeniable integrity in the expression and in the images. The integration of color, mood form and composition create a unity, which is both understated and deeply moving.

In her Currents, Cycles and Grooves (CCG) series, Margot uses and explores lines in movement. With the CCG series, Margot designs and builds a sequence of individual panels both large and small, with layers of color, texture, crisp lines and deep grooves to create currents of energy and cycles, weaving them in and out, to and fro, pushing and pulling the viewer throughout her work. However you look at them, there is a sort of pulsating energy about them with a distinctive color and mood. These pieces are intended to be modular, allowing Margot the versatility to alter the arrangement of her work in response to her mood or to a given architecture.

Margot works in acrylic paint along with other media such as oil, pencil, charcoal, oil stick, gold leaf, solvent transfers, and some sculptural elements such as recycled wood and metal on multiple handmade panels and canvases or a mixture of the two. Aware of the changes in the world and the environment we live, Margot has been incorporating more non toxic materials and eco-friendly techniques in her work over the years, constantly researching and experimenting with new ways to paint effectively and still be conscious of the effects manufactured art mediums can have on the environment. She builds wood panel supports to paint on from salvaged wood and uses discarded latex paints to save them from ending up in landfills. She also incorporates natural dyes and stains from organic materials such as coffee grinds, beet juice, onion skins, and grass. Margot has a collection of recycled objects as well as studio constructed tools made out of sticks and bamboo that she works with to create textures, lines and patterns. Some of Margot’s sculptural works consist of found natural wood debris off Cardiff beach or scraps of metal screen worked into something to be viewed and appreciated as opposed to being discarded waste.

Margot was born and raised on the island of Guam, until moving to San Diego with her family in the early seventies.  She studied Art at SDSU and Santa Monica College before launching into a lifelong discipline of self study, combining and experimenting with various mediums and techniques; including her signature portraiture commission series of children she coined “Art Image Portraiture”. She currently lives and works in coastal North San Diego County, California with her husband and two children. Margot has exhibited extensively throughout southern California and is in corporate and private collections. Art critic, Robert Pincus writes, “The CCG series is ethereal and absorbing, which evokes a series of prominent sources they include Cy Twombly and Brice Marden”.