Margaret Withers, water, baby, you get the idea, ink, gouache, vinyl paint on paper, 30" x 22"

American, b. 1965, playing from Brooklyn, NY, USA

Margaret Withers is a Brooklyn based artist working in oil, vinyl paint, gouache, ink, and watercolor on paper and canvas. Her work explores the physics of paint and the conflicting ideas of joy, melancholy, isolation and alienation in regards to the concept of home and communication. Originally from Texas, Withers has exhibited her work throughout the country and extensively in New York City, Massachusetts and Texas, and internationally in Brussels, Australia, Berlin, China, Vienna and Russia. Her artwork is included in multiple private collections and has won numerous awards including a 2013 resident fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center and the Millay Colony, and a 2013 USA Project Grant. Her artwork can be seen at MAWithers.com and she can be contacted at mwithers.artwork@gmail.com

Thoughts on the Telephone process

I greatly enjoyed the creative exercise involved in translating or visually transliterating a message from an artist work into my own creative voice. I received the visuals of the artwork created by an artist entitled, ‘before the beginning’, which is a beautiful and detailed textile that brought to my mind the concepts of ‘baby’, ‘water’, ‘creation’ and ‘home’. I took these ideas and puzzled out the universals of the creation story across different cultures and from that I painted an image of a creation myth, a narrative of a tsunami of water that is moving and rolling through time, it is powered by a machine and controlled by a small guy who maneuvers the giant structure forward in space by a large wheel. As the machine moves forward, and where the water leaves, there is a mouth left open from which a tiny house and telephone pole have popped out, forming the beginning of a community.