Margaret Garrett
Margaret Garrett left home at the age of sixteen to join the Pennsylvania Ballet Company and later joined the Cleveland Ballet as a soloist. At the age of twenty-two, she began painting, finding something spiritually akin to dance in the movement of line and color. Says Garrett of her work, “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 paintings 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, the way that colors interact, all are different manifestations of motion, rhythm, and energy. In my current series, I am composing by making collages of painted paper that is cut and pasted and then using these collages as studies for large paintings. The central preoccupation of this series is with shape and color—how shapes can have a solid, even muscular, form and at the same time convey a sense of motion.”
Garrett’s work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and art fairs including the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, the Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY, …
Margaret Garrett left home at the age of sixteen to join the Pennsylvania Ballet Company and later joined the Cleveland Ballet as a soloist. At the age of twenty-two, she began painting, finding something spiritually akin to dance in the movement of line and color. Says Garrett of her work, “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 paintings 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, the way that colors interact, all are different manifestations of motion, rhythm, and energy. In my current series, I am composing by making collages of painted paper that is cut and pasted and then using these collages as studies for large paintings. The central preoccupation of this series is with shape and color—how shapes can have a solid, even muscular, form and at the same time convey a sense of motion.”
Garrett’s work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and art fairs including the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, the Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY, Danese/Corey, NY, Birnam Wood Galleries, NY, Samara Gallery, Houston, TX, Art Miami, Texas Contemporary, Houston and the Armory Show, NY. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Parrish Art Museum and Guild Hall Museum and in numerous private and corporate collections in the United States and Europe.
Courtesy of the Artist
