Without Warning

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Margaret Witschl, “Against the Wall,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 30" (photo courtesy of the artist)

What happens when bad news falls from the sky, comforting routines vanish, and your world changes forever? Margaret Witschl responds to this heart-wrenching question with paintings that chronicle her nine-year journey as the primary caregiver to a family member with Alzheimer’s.

These deeply personal works, designed like pages from a diary and entitled Piece of Mind, are on view at Edmonton’s Bugera Lamb Fine Art until June 22, 2025. 

At first glance, Witschl’s art seems random, chaotic, and unpredictable — and that’s the point. She draws inspiration from life’s unexpected twists and turns, from fears, fretful dreams, and memories, and even she can be surprised by what emerges on her canvas. This surrealist approach, which places familiar objects in unexpected settings, is shaped by a distinctive twist: caregiving’s tender, often heartbreaking realities.

Take Against the Wall, for instance. A broken bowl flies through the air, hurling its blood-red liquid against the wall. This scene recalls the evening when Witschl invited friends over for snacks. Her loved one, eager to help, carried the sauce down to the rumpus room but slipped, and the sauce splattered and dripped down the once-pristine staircase. 

In the foreground of this Alfred Hitchcock-worthy scene sits a ghostly blue rabbit — an echo of another memory. One frigid winter night, Witschl was driving home when she spotted a jackrabbit huddled in the middle of the road. Fragile, innocent, and exposed, it embodied exactly how she felt about her loved one, whom she describes as “sweetness and light, but at risk.”

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Margaret Witschl, “Green Sleeve,” 2023, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 30" (photo courtesy of the artist)

Green Sleeve is even more menacing. A rain-laden thundercloud looms in the upper-left corner of this painting, but it’s not the glow of lightning that streaks across the sky: it’s a comet hurtling toward the Earth. As Witschl puts it, the outstretched hands, caught mid-gesture as if trying to fend it off, seem to say: “I don’t like anything that’s happening here. I don’t want it. Stay away from me. I didn’t ask for this.”

As with much of Witschl’s work, the title is a play on words. The outstretched hands wear literal green sleeves, but also evoke the “Green Sleeve”— a plastic folder used in Alberta to store personal directives for emergency responders. Beneath the shielding arms, directly in the comet’s path, lies a solitary, abandoned hospital bed. It’s a grief-laden image that foreshadows many a caregiver’s lonely future.

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Margaret Witschl, “Missing Piece,” 2023, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 30" (photo courtesy of the artist)

While each painting speaks to sorrow, Witschl’s exhibition as a whole radiates quiet acceptance. The uncanny sense of calm stems partly from her use of a soothing prairie palette, and partly from the geometric grid that anchors each composition—a routine she finds deeply comforting. Her impulse to begin with order beneath the chaos reflects both the influence of Gestalt psychologists, who believed that humans instinctively organize disorder into meaningful patterns, and her own remarkable composure.

Perhaps that’s what makes this show so unexpectedly reassuring. Witschl’s paintings capture the confusion, fear, and aching loneliness that so often accompany caregiving. Yet taken together, the work—and the act of painting itself—is ultimately about coping: finding clarity and meaning within the incomprehensible.

“The process of painting is like writing a diary,” she says. “It gives me more capacity internally to deal with what’s coming the next day, and the next day, and the next day…”

Her art becomes a form of mental health care — not only for Witschl, as she summons strength for what lies ahead, but for anyone facing the fearsome turns of fate. ■

Margaret Witschl, Piece of Mind, is on view at Bugera Lamb Fine Art in Edmonton until June 22. Formerly Bugera Matheson Gallery, the gallery has been renamed Bugera Lamb Fine Art and reopened under new ownership (Claire Lamb) in February 2025.

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