Margaret Garrett
Born in North Carolina and raised in Pennsylvania, Margaret Garrett currently lives and maintains a studio on Shelter Island, New York. She left home at the age of 16 to join the Pennsylvania Ballet Company and later joined the Cleveland Ballet as a soloist. At the age of 22, she began painting, finding a spiritual connection to dance in the movement of line and color.
Garrett’s work has been widely exhibited in galleries, museums and art fairs, including the Parrish Art Museum, the Watermill Center, the Heckscher Museum, Danese/Corey, Art Miami, Art on Paper and the Armory Show. In 2018, she was awarded a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work is held in the Parrish Art Museum and Guild Hall Museum and in numerous private and corporate collections in the United States and Europe.
“My childhood was spent dancing. It was my first identity and my first mode of expression as an artist, and one that continues to inform my work to this day. When I begin working on a new piece, I see the paper or canvas as an empty stage and the line as movement. Texture, form, and the way that colors interact are all different manifestations of motion, rhythm, and energy.
While my work is abstract, it can at times evoke shapes and patterns found in nature. I often work in ongoing series, developing a language and following it as it morphs and evolves. Some of my series are more driven by mark making and layers of color, and in others the shapes and the way they interplay are the dynamic force, but in all my work I’m concerned with movement and the overall music of the piece.” — MG
Yellow Rhythm, 2018, acrylic on linen, 29 x 41 in
Tuning Fields 318, acrylic on paper, 22 x 30 in
Sway, 2017, two color woodcut, 36 x 27 in
Ritual, 2017, two color woodcut, 36 x 27 in
Jangle, 2016, acrylic on linen, 51 x 66 in
Red, White, and Blue, 2018, acrylic on canvas board, 20 x 16 in
Writ in Water, 2017, acrylic on linen, 66 x 57 in
Tuning Fields 302, 2013, acrylic on linen, 43 x 61 in
Tuning Fields 298, 2013, acrylic, 41 x 29 in