Interview
Margaret Lipsey
Margaret began her exploration of color and movement in acrylic painting in 2000 while studying at culinary school in Vermont. After 15 years as a professional chef, she chose to devote herself to her Art and began selling professionally in 2016. Color interaction, movement, and emotion have dominated her work for the past nine years, with collections evolving in response and often opposition to each other. Her informal training is fueled by her natural curiosity and a desire to capture and reflect the emotions present in her surroundings. Her latest collections showcase a progression from the ethereal soft colors of lakeside scenes in “Serenity,” to the structured dynamics of “Borders Not Limits,” to last year’s vibrant and energetic movements in “Wild.” The common thread connecting these works is her commitment to color and the expressive dance of her brushes or palette knives on the canvas. The themes often encourage a deeper engagement with our inner selves, exploring the truths of our emotions, desires, and dreams. She creates her artwork in Montreal, Canada, and occasionally in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“The road has not been linear, I went to culinary school in Vermont and worked as a professional chef for about 15 years. The struggles and long hours led to a burn out and I found myself looking for a different creative outlet. I began with a calligraphy class and then slow started playing with watercolors. At 40, I declared myself an Artist with a capital A and that opened the door to exploration and play. I was drawn to acrylics because I could create texture, create with a palette knife, and it was quick drying. As soon as I began to explore abstract it was like I opened a floodgate, work just poured out of me and my curiosity led to be experiment with color and movement. As I started naming works, I realized that painting was also connecting me more deeply to my emotions. My work today still explores color, movement, and emotions.”
What inspires you?
“I am inspired by discovery. Early on I remember falling in love with a single mark in the corner of a painting. What was it about that mark that drew my attention? Could I create an entire work with that much magnetism? I am pulled through my practice by discovery. Discovery of color interaction, of mixing and blending and layering, of how motion ignites an emotion in the viewer. I look at every canvas, every piece of paper, as an opportunity to find treasures. Some have many and others need a few more layers but as soon as I find that special mark or emotion jumping off the canvas, I move on to the next canvas and its treasures.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“My work has deeply connected me with my emotions. It has helped me work through feeling of solitude, my divorce, uncertainty about my future. In my early practice, I let the emotions, and the healing come through however it needed to but in the past years I have gone looking for emotions. In 2024, I attended several women’s retreats. Some lasted a few hours, others were multiple days, but at all of them I noticed that I was not the only middle-aged woman who had suppressed my emotions for the good of the family or for peace at work. My practice today is about searching for and fully feeling the emotions of those women, embracing the rage of their silence, the sadness of not being supported, the grief of loss that they pushed down to show up for everyone else in their lives. I sit with the deep darkness of those feelings, and I try and find a beauty in representing them, a connection, an understanding. I try to give a visual voice to all that cannot be said. I have seen so much power in allowing oneself to trust the truth of their emotions, that when they are sad or angry they have that right, I hope that my work gives them permission to reconnect with what they feel in each moment without judgement.”
How would you describe your work?
“My work is bold and raw at times and deeply nurturing and soft at other times. I allow each collection to have its own personality, its own life, and then I go fully into it. I would say that most of my work is alive with energy, the energy may change from collection to collection, but my goal is to pull in the view with the charge of emotion so that they feel it across the room.”
Which artists influence you most?
“I am awed by Hilma AF Klint for creating so much work and keeping it hidden. I have always felt a painting isn’t finished until I have shared it with the world. Her complete opposite approach and the geometry and movement of her work is deeply intriguing to me. I also love Helen Frankenthaler’s use of color and color fields. I truly am inspired by any artist with passion for their work. I find it so incredible that we can all interpret a concept or realize our vision in completely different ways. When I look at art I am constantly trying to get into the artists head and discover how they moved though creating the work even if it never becomes a part of my practice.”
What is your creative process like?
“I create in waves, working on multiple paintings at once for a period of time and then I pause. When I am in the studio, I produce a great deal of work. When I pause I am soaking in the world, finding what begs for me to respond to, gathering inspiration, and often playing in other media to shift my perspective. When I declared myself an Artist with a capital ‘A,’ I was in a way giving myself permission to explore in any way that I needed to in that moment. I have stopped painting for a time to do a self portrait project, to write a poetry book, or to explore collage. I allow myself to dabble, to let a variety of interests feed back into my painting.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“During the pandemic, my family and I would walk everyday and for the first few months we saw no other people. I decided in the Spring to make a declaration that there was still life in our home by hanging my work on our front porch and switching the painting every couple of days. When people started to come out more regularly, I received so many thank yous for sharing beauty in that difficult period. People had changed their routes to see what new painting I had up. I realized then that the Artists responsibility in society to share their work, to speak their perspective, to remind their community of beauty and pain. I think that what each artists has to say is evolving but that role is unchanging. We have these gives and this passion in our souls to create in order to be a mirror to the world, to either ask for change or remind each other of our connection.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“I have an upcoming exhibition: Momentum, Women’s Art Society of Montreal in May 2025. My recent exhibitions include: She, Cater Art Gallery Montreal, March 2025; The Language of Abstraction, Conversations with Artists, (online), March 2025 and The Deepest Hue, Cater Art Gallery, Montreal, February 2025.”
Website: www.margaretlipsey.com
Instagram: @margaretlipseyart
