Margaret Thompson’s Synesthetic Responses to Music and the Natural World
The mystical paintings of New-Mexico based artist Margaret Thompson embody spirituality, explorations of symbols, and a reverence to the natural world. The artist collects raw materials such as earth, sand, and spices, using them as natural pigments to create her own symbolic language and colour harmonies which breathe and undulate on her canvases. Always in tune with her ever-changing environment, she often paints outside, as her sensory openness allows her to absorb the light, colours, and energy of New Mexico’s expansive landscape. She records her synesthetic responses to music and the natural world on her lyrical canvases, which unfold like scenes from ancient mythology or a portal opening to another dimension. Beckoning the viewer to step into a world where spirits, shells, and shrines are bathed in moonlight, Margaret’s surreal dreamscapes heighten our connection with the synchronistic rhythms of the universe.
Margaret Thompson received a BA in Visual Arts and International Studies from Eckerd College. Her recent exhibitions include ‘I look at the moon like a fellow traveller’ at Lamb Gallery, London, UK; ‘Hawthorn and the Feast of Julian’ at Arusha Gallery, NY, US; ‘Midsummer’ at Tyger Tyger Gallery, NC, US; ‘Secret Garden’ at Wilder Gallery, London, UK; ‘Seven Surfaces’ at Red Arrow Gallery, TN, US.
What brought you into the art world? Do you have any memories from your childhood that drove you to become an artist?
I was always drawing as a child. Big elaborate chalk drawings on my grandpa’s patio in New Mexico, kid marker drawings in my baby diaries. I drew in all my classes in school. In college I studied art but it was hard for me to do the assignments, I wanted to do other things I was more compelled by. After college I moved to Mexico’s Yucatan and painted symbols all over the walls in my house in the jungle. I moved home to the states and lived in Baltimore, Maryland where I made abstract paintings with house paint and words. It wasn’t until I rented my first studio in Oakland, CA in 2019 that I realized how badly I needed to make art more consistently. My soul had gotten crushed by the rat race in the bay area and in that studio I sort of resurrected myself. I started making paintings as big as the walls would fit. Something cracked open in me in that space and since, I’ve made some form of art almost every day.
Describe your work in three words.
Rhythmic, mercurial, symbolic
Beaming, 2023. Oil, wax, mica on panel
The Three, 2023. Oil, collected earth, natural pigment, wax on linen
Can you describe your creative process? Tell me about the mythical, symbolic forms in your work.
It feels like osmosis. I take in a lot of natural beauty wherever I am. I am very observant and I follow my senses. The most important part of the process to me is how I live beyond the studio. I wander a lot. Travel, explore, seek out chance. I’m fascinated by people. I fall in love easily. The observations and experiences that stick with me develop meaning and become part of my internal language of symbols. Albatross sun, fixed stars, monad flower burst, the twins, messenger birds, the match, the juniper tree, the candle flame are some of them. I use them to try and work with a more universal language hoping to make the art accessible to more people. If the door of the art world is intimidating to knock at, I hope these symbols and the loose myths they form might offer a code to walk right in.
How has living in New Mexico shaped you as an artist?
New Mexico has very little interference compared to other places I’ve lived. I can really hear myself think here. The quieter mind and great expanses form a strong connection to spirit. I am constantly in awe. The landscape is extreme and requires respect. The light, the heat, the tones of earth, the wildness and wilderness have become part of my DNA and find themselves into my paintings no matter where I am working.
I was thrilled you created new paintings for the show “I look to the moon like a fellow traveler” I curated for LAMB Gallery. What is the inspiration behind this body of work?
The two paintings I made for this exhibition came out of an annual pilgrimage I take to a landscape near Big Bend in west Texas. I go during a full moon each year and spend a week out on the land exploring the geology of the region and making art. It was a great synchronicity that I was living the title of the exhibition.
Harbinger, 2024. Oil, raw pigment, earth, juniper, mica, wax, chilli on linen. 152.5 x 122 cm
Venidero, 2024. Oil, raw pigment, earth, juniper, mica, wax, chilli on linen. 152.5 x 122 cm
Are there any artists who have especially inspired you?
Right now I am most inspired by the sentiments of the surrealist movement. Particularly the women artists associated with it. Remedios Varo. Leonora Carrington. Leonor Fini. I struggle with convention, really just reject it completely. I like the freedom and embrace of the fantastic that surrealism allows. I do a lot of visual exercises to play with psychic automatism that show me shapes and forms of energy flow. These exercises also speak to desert transcendentalist painters like Agnes Pelton. I paint this way, along with symbolic narratives that incorporate my experiences with the unconscious, dream imagery, and the random more mundane things I experience in daily life. Surrealism was born of many things, one being the trauma of war and subsequent feelings of helplessness and disenchantment. We’re living in a time of humanitarian and environmental crisis and I think it is important to make art that is innovative and transformative, that invites us into alternative realities potent with magic and possibility.
What is your philosophy on life?
I experience the world in the present moment. I don’t have an overarching philosophy. Each day I try to seek out magic and strange beauty, to look beneath the surface of things and constantly practice unveiling. To get rid of filtered down consciousness and stay curious. Also to just be a good person. To be kind, to love.
What are you working on next?
I’ve just completed a new body of work that exhibits with Arusha Gallery in Ibiza this month at Contemporary Art Now. I’m painting for upcoming shows in Nashville and Mexico City. I just moved from the desert country to downtown Santa Fe. All I have is the next painting in my mind. I’ve stretched and primed a big canvas and I cannot wait to begin again.