Margot Waller Madgett is a visual artist working with an experimental approach and has numerous series of contemporary paintings and sculpture. Margot, one of nine children was born and raised in Guam and now works and lives in north coastal San Diego County. She blends methods, materials, and her various series to create a mix of the abstract, and the representational to combine a connection between the two in modern arrangements. Underlying stories hiding in plain sight, purposely open to interpretation. She feels there’s limitless possibilities when working in mixed media in her paintings and sculpture. Her intent is to inspire a mood, contemplation, and a connection with oneself and the world around us.
Margot’s passion and interest in a variety of subject matters drives her to work on several series at a time. She purposely uses ink, pencil, oil stick, charcoal, acrylic paint, solvent transfers in layers to create depth on canvas, as well as wood panels she designs makes herself. She integrates form, mood, color, and composition with the intent to convey a compelling open narrative with understated unity. You will find elements of texture, movement, and layering with combined mediums to weave threads, connecting imagery taken from nature, humanity, and abstract elements.
Aware of humanity’s environmental impact, Margot repurposes disregarded materials and found objects in some of her work to give it a new life and meaning. Margot has often been approached to challenge her creativity. One client’s commission she incorporated the debris from a WWII veterans’ airplane wreckage dug up from his father’s crash site. She turned those broken fragments into a grouping of paintings and sculptures that told his father’s story in a way that he could never have imagined.
Over Margot’s 25-year career, she’s worked on her contemporary series along with a non-traditional style of children’s portraiture, she coined “Art Image Portraiture”. Her contemporary approach in capturing the children’s spirit and personality in a painting with longevity and complexity of a true work of art.
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”.
The Dream Series
| A Subconscious Exploration |
Open to Interpretation – The Chaos of Abstraction with Storylines In-between
My work is like a story in the making. While I’m working on a piece it’s like being in a storm - spontaneously using my wits, composed and chaotic, in control and out of control. It is like while you’re experiencing a moment, you can’t tell a story about it until after it has happened. You have to see what happens, going along with the grooves of life. It is only after that you can make sense of it and tell a story about it to yourself and to others. I work from source materials and use mixed techniques, which allows me to discover and execute in the moment, using imagery, color and abstraction. Together this becomes something that is unfolding and telling. My reoccurring use of images from nature, such as birds and lotus flowers, are symbols and visual cues into the work and multiple interpretations. I use perspective grids and boxes as a way of telling the viewer about the possibilities and differences of our own perspectives of life.
I feel my work is a subconscious interpretation of humanity’s desire for peace and spiritual satisfaction. In life and in my work, we are on a search for the positives in awareness, knowledge, and connection - with nature and with each other, throughout our own personal journeys and stories. My hope is for a connection between the viewers’ interpretation and my work, as a visual thought-provoking story line.
http://www.artsbusinessinstitute.org/artists/artist-profile-margot-waller-madgett/
Born in Tamuning, Guam, 1963
EDUCATION:
San Diego State University, San Diego, California
University of California San Diego Craft Center, La Jolla, California
Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, California
Grossmont College, El Cajon, California
GALLERIES & EXHIBITIONS:
2023 Nordstrom Showcase, San Diego, California
2019 Art San Diego Contemporary Art Show, San Diego, California
2019 Things with Wings, Cardiff by the Sea Library, California
2018 It’s All Therapy and I Can’t Help Myself, Cardiff by the Sea, California
2014 Merge + Mix = Mingle, Venice Beach, California
2013 A Field Guide, Cardiff, California
2012 Sustainability Matters, San Diego, California
2007 Parisi Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Del Mar, California
2006 Parisi Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Del Mar, California
2005 Parisi Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Del Mar, California
2004 Parisi Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Del Mar, California
2004 Scripps Encinitas Healing for the Arts, Encinitas, California
2003 Parisi Gallery & Sculpture Garden, two-person show, Del Mar, California
2003 Sushi Performance & Visual Art, Solo exhibit, San Diego, California
2003 Sushi Performance & Visual Art, Red Ball, San Diego, California
2002 Parisi Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Del Mar, California
2002 Salon Tonic, San Diego, California
2002 Children’s Museum San Diego, Solo exhibit, San Diego, California
2002 Seven Restaurant/Gallery, San Diego, California
2002 Gargoyle Gallery, San Diego, California
2001 Open Studio & Home Show, Cardiff, California
