ABSTRACT PAINTINGS, WALL SCULPTURES
& MANIPULATED DIGITAL IMAGERY
Valerie Margolis - an artist based in the greater Boston area - uses found materials (bandages, dental models, harness, carpet, innersole material) and color, texture, rhythm and light. Her paintings, wall-sculptures
and scans are based in art historical tradition and in a personal,
as well as Judeo-Christian, iconography. She explores themes
of conjunction, protection, boundaries, injury and vestiges within
a "painterly minimalism".
ARTIST'S STATEMENT:
Most of my paintings begin on the floor: with one serving as a drop-cloth for the other, each building a personal history in paint that culminates in a lush, heavily-worked surface that implies the grid, and aspires to purity.
Over the past twenty-five years, my paintings, wall-sculptures and digital images have developed into what I consider a contemplative painterly minimalism documenting phases of personal development and self-demarcation. The work primarily involves the confluence of opposites, boundaries, and vestiges. It is based in art-historical tradition, and a personal-–as well as Judeo-Christian--iconography. Through the deliberate, the sub-conscious, and the fortuitous, my intention is to universalize the particulars of internal/external experience and vision within the privacy that abstraction affords.
|
“Valerie Margolis is a deeply thoughtful artist, whose works reveal a subtly exploring mind. She has the ability to transform humble everyday materials into images imbued with a sparsely minimalist yet poetically suggestive aesthetic. Gifted with a finely tuned eye for color, Margolis manages to fuse personal, worldly and even disturbing associations with a rhythm-laden spirituality.”
-- David Anfam, Art historian & Critic
“... Valerie Margolis' work is some of the more innovative and exciting I have seen in recent years. She has the uncanny ability to take detritus and commonplace objects and to artistically weave them into an access to cosmic rhythms. She is utterly ingenious in taking ancient art forms--such as religious icons or human body shapes-- and employing them in such a way that they become explosive with both old and new energy in our present context. Her art uncovers a world of transformative power to which few people have access.”
-- Father Xavier John Seubert, Ph.D.
Department of Theology & Religious Studies
Villanova University
|
|
|
| RESUME |
|
| MEDIA: |
Abstract
oils, watercolors and acrylics, assemblages, digital imagery |
|
|
|
| EDUCATION: |
Boston
University, B.A.
Art Students League of New York (with Robert Beverly Hale) |
SOLO
EXHIBITIONS: |
O.K. Harris Works of Art |
New York, NY |
2011 |
| |
The Beating Heart Show |
Exeter, NH |
2008 |
| |
York
Square Cinema Gallery |
New
Haven, CT |
1999 |
|
The Firehouse
Gallery |
Newburyport,
MA |
1996 |
|
Merrimack
College |
North
Andover, MA |
1995 |
|
St. Francis
Retreat Center |
Rye Beach,
NH |
1993 |
|
Laura
Knott Gallery -
Bradford College |
Bradford,
MA |
1986 |
| GROUP EXHIBITIONS: |
No Strings Attached
12th Biennial Valentine Invitational Exhibition
Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery |
Reno, NV |
2012
|
| |
NUTUREart 2011 Benefit Exhibition, curated by Pamela Auchincloss, David Cohen, James Kalm, & Gregory Volk |
New York, NY |
2011
|
MYSELF: A Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraiture, Sheppard
Fine Arts Gallery |
Reno, NV |
2011
|
Invitational Group Show
100 Market Street |
Portsmouth, NH |
2008 |
| Whitney Artworks |
Portland, ME |
2005 |
| Cadogan
Contemporary |
London,
England |
2004 |
| Kidder-Smith Gallery |
Boston, MA |
2002 |
| Davidson
& Daughters Gallery |
Portland,
ME |
1998 |
| Danforth Gallery |
Portland, ME |
1997 |
| Elements
Gallery |
Rockland,
ME |
1997 |
| Washington Theological Union |
Washington, DC |
1997 |
| Washington
Theological Union |
Washington,
DC |
1996 |
| Arrowmont School of Art |
Gatlinburg, TN |
1996 |
| O.K.
Harris Gallery |
New
York, NY |
1991 |
| Fauve Gallery |
Amherst, MA |
1990 |
| Evelyn
Todd Gallery |
Dover,
NH |
1986 |
Chapel Gallery -
St. Anselm's College |
Manchester, NH |
1986 |
Mugar
Gallery -
Colby-Sawyer College |
New
London, NH |
1984 |
New Hampshire Arts Biennial -
Manchester Institute of Arts & Sciences |
Manchester, NH |
1983 |
American
Art Center |
New
York, NY |
1980 |
| Arts Students League Gallery |
New York, NY |
1978 |
| |
|
|
| GRANTS AND AWARDS: |
Cash Award - Arrowmont School of Art, Gatlinburg,
TN, 1996 Technical Assistance grant sponsored by the New Hampshire
Council On The Arts and the National Endowment For The Arts,
1996, 1997 |
| |
|
|
|
| ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS: |
Portsmouth Herald, April, 2008
"The Portland Phoenix":
Art and Subjecthood - Valerie Margolis & Bridget Spaeth at
Whitney Artworks, by Chris Thompson, May, 2005
"Foster's Daily Democrat": In site: Pondering abstract
art from cyberspace - Valerie Margolis, abstractionist, by Dennis
Robinson, April, 2002
Portfolio Magazine, Vol. 1, Issue
3, June, 1996
Boston Globe, Sunday, September 15, 1996
Portsmouth Herald, December, 1993
Hampton Union, December, 1993 |
| |
|
|
|
| COLLECTIONS: |
Washington Theological Union, Washington,
D.C. |
|
