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Margo Selski

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BIO/ ARTISTS STATEMENT

BIO/ ARTISTS STATEMENT | Media List


Statement

ARTIST BIO
Margo Selski received a Master's in Fine Art from the University of Minnesota. She also received a Master's in Art for Children from the State University of New York in Brockport, New York. Her undergraduate degree is from Berea College, Kentucky. She has been a full-time studio painter since 1994. Her oil and beeswax paintings have been featured in several one-person exhibitions including the Rochester Art Center and Museum, the Plains Art Museum, Illinois Central College, The Art Institute International of Minnesota, the University of Minnesota, the State Cloud State University, Augsburg College. Her work has been recognized for it's excellence, producing numerous awards and honors, and has been shown and collected in various museums, including the Plains Art Museum, the Tweed Museum, Fredrick Weisman Museum, the Contemporary Museum of Art in Boulder, Colorado and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Selski recently completed a series of multiple panelled triptych paintings on wood funded by a 2004/2005 Minnesota State Arts Board Grant. She also was honored with a Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program Grant in 2005 and chosen for a purchase award by the Fredrick Weisman Museum of Minnesota. Currently, she is creating new work following two "sell out" shows in 2005 and is preparing for an exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum and the Glass Garage Gallery of Hollywood, California.

ARTIST STATEMENT
I work in primarily oil paint and beeswax on large canvases. I wish to create an initial sense of stability by echoing qualities found in northern Flemish masterpieces; I use aged tints, surface cracks and the static three-quarter poses typical of the period. I paint imaginary characters rendered in intricate detail frozen in mid-gesture within airless spaces. By using sumptuous fabrics, laced ruffled collars, black and white checked floors as well as surface treatment, I attempt of further accentuate an illusion of history, balance and permanence.

On initial viewing, my work reads as placidly narrative storytelling. Seemingly simple allegories, my work reveals itself over time. By using a safe and familiar composition my goal is to lull the viewer into a false sense of comfort and familiarity, where they are drawn to images which, upon further viewing, become curious, uncomfortable and perhaps even dangerous. By juxtaposing images from myth and reality, I fullfill my own personal desire to explore the mysterious.

Thematically in my work, I address motherhood, familial love, permanence, impermanence, and the fragility of childhood and life. I hope to communicate an underlying desire for safety and stability in a threatening world.

"I offer to you my imagination, a bastion of myths and
metaphors made up of my idiosyncrasies, fears and
desires, both subtle and sublime, and not so sublime."