Margaret Witschl: Maps for Self-Discovery
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Bugera Matheson Gallery (New Location) 1B-10110 124 Street, Edmonton, Alberta T5N 1P6
Margaret Witschl, "Maps for Self Discovery," 2019
Gallery Walk April 13 and 14 - Bugera Matheson Gallery welcomes you to the Spring Gallery Walk.
We welcome you on Saturday from 10-5 pm and on Sunday from noon-4 pm.
Margaret Witschl’s show “Maps for Self-Discovery” is featured in the main exhibition space.
The second exhibit space will a variety of works and many miniature paintings that are both exquisite, and budget friendly.
There will be works by:
Kim Atlin, Peter Deacon r.c.a., Jane Everett, Terry Fenton, Les Graff r.c.a., Jerry Heine, Riki Kuropatwa, Janice Mason Steeves, Gisa Mayer, Sharon Moore-Foster, Loraine
"I met Margaret Witschl when she wrote an insightful review of the Les Graff show in 2018.
Margaret has been painting for 40 years. Her work has been shown in numerous public exhibitions, and is held in important public and corporate collections. Yet, the work has had little commercial gallery exposure.
Curious, I asked to see Margaret’s work and studio. She graciously invited me to visit and I was intrigued with what I saw. Painted canvases lined the walls, some finished, some in process. On each canvas, I saw seemingly random objects, painted over a grid, which lay over what looked like the silhouette of a land mass, as if on a map.
It was unexpected. I was absorbed and interested by what I saw and jumped at the opportunity to represent her and host this exhibit." - Angela Bugera Matheson
Artist Statement
“Maps show us where we are going. Illustrated maps give us a preview of what we’ll see when we get there. When we are in unfamiliar territory, maps are reassuring objects. The further we are off the beaten path, the more comforting they can be.
The ideas of anxiety, chance and unpredictability are longstanding interests of mine.
To symbolize these ideas, images of mundane objects are combined with bits of landscape and simple silhouettes. These seemingly unrelated images and their sometimes odd connections represent what is random, unpredictable and uncontrollable. They are chosen for their power to suggest anxiety… weapons, warnings, barriers, violence, conflict, peril, loss. Some are drawn from my personal diary of events gone awry, worrisome visions and fretful dreams.
They are juxtaposed with graticules – map lines – a logical geometric pattern which in contrast suggests constancy, equilibrium, and perhaps security.
These paintings explore ideas of chance, risk, the unknowable and the oddities of coincidence. They draw on ideas of the subconscious from the dreamlike art of Surrealism, the literary world’s stream of consciousness and traditional illustrated maps.
I recognize the instinctive need to make sense of things, and these present possible, but non-linear story lines, open to personal interpretations.
“One thing leads to another” describes both my work process and its final imagery. It expresses for me the fact that we are who we are through unpredictable and unique influences and events…the very randomness that we fear.”
Margaret Witschl, January 2019