Marguerite MacIntosh

My art practice began ten years ago after our five children were grown and I retired from architectural practice.  Soon after this we moved from the Fraser Valley to the Okanagan area of BC and much of my art is a consideration of the liminalities that I have been processing over this last decade.  I am particularly interested in ideas that resonate between past and future, inner and outer worlds, physical and spiritual perceptions.  I look to express experiences of the human condition which transcend place and time, recognizing our shared humanity: our joys, suffering, vulnerability, ephemerality, and mortality.  I want my work to be an expression of noticing.

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Architectural design which envisions the interface of the built environment within the landscape informs my use of clear, hard-edged geometric elements, such as lines or dots, in combination with gestural mark making and loose painterly brushstrokes.  The use of square grids recalls my hand-drawn method of space planning and design on graph paper.  Grids suggest infinity when imagined as continuing beyond the edges of the canvas or panel as well as woven textiles layering vertical with horizontal to create fabrics that provide covering and shelter.  Square formatting evades and/or includes the categories of portrait and landscape.  The embedded geometries present intangible concepts, metaphors for the transcendent made visible. 

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Most of my paintings, drawings and multimedia works are layered.  Controlled and measured elements are interspersed and overlapped with those that are spontaneous and serendipitous.  This process evidences a contemplative engagement with the place or object I am painting.  Recurring embedded dots within the artwork are reminders to pause, to take moments to be still within the rush of daily life.