Artist Bio

Margaret is a multi-passionate artist. The pottery classes she took as a child gave her a new way of looking at her world. Her mother was a watercolor artist. Margaret would spend hours at the kitchen table watching her mother and learning from her. As a teenager buying a film camera became a top priority and while she still loves the camera she continues to grow as an artist in other directions like mixed media painting, oil painting, botanic illustration, and monotype printmaking. 
Her art is inspired by nature and in her youth, she was influenced by time spent outside. Growing up in a valley at the foothills of Colorado Springs she would go on as many outdoor adventures as possible. Margaret once spent three weeks with Outward Bound winter camping, skiing mountain passes with backpacks, ice climbing, building igloos, and sleeping in snow caves. This lead to working with the Outdoor Program at CU Boulder as an outdoor educator and guide. She received her degree in Outdoor Recreation from CU and went to work for Outside Magazine. The outdoors played a large role in her life and she is a steward for Colorado’s natural resources.

She spent many years understanding, writing, and painting and reflecting on her life experience. Her writings were the catalyst for her family story, Hidden Valley Road written by Robert Kolker. Recently this book has been named Oprah’s book club pick and has become a New York Times best-selling book.

When Margaret had her children she wanted to be a good role model to them. She wanted them to know they could pursue their passions. Now one of her daughters is an accomplished photographer on the verge of her own career as a creative entrepreneur. When her children were very young Margaret spent five years painting with Bernie Marek, one of the founders of the art therapy program at Naropa. This is where she learned to incorporate meditation into her work.

Margaret also spent five years studying botanic illustration at the Denver Botanic Gardens. This school of Art and Illustration often gets compared to the Rhode Island School of Design. Her mother took her to the Botanic Gardens often when she was a child. The gardens left a big impact on her. The illustration training came after spending ten years studying her subject in macro flower photography. She is also a master gardener. Now Margaret has a public installation of her flower photos at the Dahlia Center for Health and Well Being, a flagship campus for Denver’s Mental Health System.

She continues to push the boundaries of her abstract work and received an honorable mention for her piece My Value Study at a juried show at the Dairy Center in Boulder. She has recently discovered printmaking where she blends her artistic background into a fresh new look with her one of a kind monotypes. She is exploring solar plate etching. She would like to combine her photography and painting background into etchings or relief plates for printmaking using both relief and intaglio methods.
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