“I create large-scale watercolors of flowers. Painted with great exactitude,
my work brings the viewer into intimate contact with flowers growing in their
natural settings. I emphasize the play of light and color in watercolors that
are both startlingly real depictions and abstract dramas of form and composition.
The flowers are most often seen close-up, so that they become inescapable
visual presences. The desire is to immerse the viewer in the experience of
nature in all its wonder and profusion. The viewer is invited into a world
of growing things and allowed to travel through it intimately. This journey
entails a kind of amazement that reminds us that the sublime is always in
our midst, if we could only take notice.
I want to pull the viewer in, to seduce the eye into traveling through the
painting, stopping here and there, lingering over nature's extravagance and
economy, over the order which exists in the midst of seeming randomness. It
is a journey which parallels the one we travel as we try to find our place
in the world, searching for meaning in the face of routine and loss, seeking
to find the sublime in the everyday, the divine in our midst.”
Washington D.C.artist Mary Margaret Pipkin attributes her passion for nature to her childhood in Texas . Growing up in San Angelo , the artist spent long, lazy days outdoors at home and at her grandmother's ranch near the headwaters of the Llano River .
After graduating from San Angelo Central High School in 1969, Pipkin earned both a BFA (1973) and an MFA (1975) from the University of Texas , Austin and studied painting in New York at the Brooklyn Museum Art School . Initially working in oil and acrylic on canvas, the artist experienced an epiphany in 1981 when she accompanied a friend on a painting expedition to the U.S. Botanic Garden. Her first attempts at representing the flowers in watercolor were a turning point. She felt an immediate attraction to the subject and medium. This experience set the stage for her concentration on painting flowers in watercolor over the next twenty years.
Pipkin's work has been seen this year in feature shows in North Carolina , Georgia , Indiana , The Museum of the Southwest in Midland , Texas , and at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington , D.C. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The Washington Post, The National Institutes of Health, and many corporate and private collections. Pipkin lives just outside of Washington , DC in Arlington , Virginia with her husband and three sons.
San Angelo Museum
of Fine Arts
One Love Street
San Angelo, Texas 76903
Fax: (325) 658 - 6800
Phone: (325) 653 -
3333
e-mail:
museum@samfa.org