Russo Lee Gallery is pleased to present From the Edge of Beauty and Survival, a new exhibition of paintings by Margot Voorhies Thompson. Rooted in Thompson's decades-long engagement with Oregon’s remote Northern Great Basin—Fort Rock, Summer Lake, Abert Rim, Hart Mountain, and the Warner Valley—these works draw their palette directly from the desert's lichen colonies, yielding colors of vermillion-orange, cochineal red, cadmium yellow, and brilliant green, alongside pigments the artist has collected on-site in the form of ditch dirt, minerals, and sand. The paintings explore themes of cosmology, survival, and cultural memory, informed by petroglyphs dating back 10,000 to 18,000 years that speak to the ingenuity of the region's Paleolithic nomadic cultures. Accompanying the exhibition, two short documentary film clips—Early Summer and Late Summer—will stream on the gallery monitor, offering an intimate look at Thompson making art on location under the intense desert sun.
Margot Voorhies Thompson studied at Lewis and Clark College, Reed College, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and at the Hochschule für Künstlerische (University of Art and Design) in Linz, Austria. Her work is in the collections of the Portland Art Museum; the Brooklyn Art Museum; the Stanford University Hospital; and the Printmaking Workshop in New York, among others. She has completed several collaborative book commissions with Kim Stafford, Pattiann Rogers, and Wendell Berry for the University of Oregon's Knight Library Press. Other commissions include pieces for Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR; Portland State University, Portland, OR; Kaiser Permanente, Tualatin, OR; the Woodstock Branch Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR; Doernbecher Children's Hospital, Portland, OR; and Oregon State Hospital, Salem, OR. Thompson is currently the subject of a full-length film documentary, in production by Ben Mercer, about her work and creative process.