Margot Voorhies Thompson

In March, the gallery is pleased to exhibit new work by artist Margot Voorhies Thompson in Desert Light. In a series of energetic and dynamic paintings, Thompson recreates the remote beauty of the high desert landscape. No stranger to being in nature, Thompson’s landscapes embody the essence and serenity of the outdoors. Layers of intense pigments are applied to the surface and then scraped away unearthing a depth of color and texture reminiscent of the irregularities often found in nature. Thompson calls this style of artmaking her ‘layering up and scraping back’ painting techniques, which she employs “…to mimic the workings of the weather.” For Thompson, this process is repeated, “…until the final painting emerged as a discovery. For me each piece is a visual poem revealed.”

A Portland native, Margot Voorhies Thompson studied at Lewis and Clark College, Reed College, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and at the Hochschule Fur Kunsterlische 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, Pattian Rogers, and Wendell Berry for the University of Oregon’s Knight Library Press. Other commissions include pieces for Oregon University of Health and Sciences, Portland; Portland State University; Kaiser Permanente, Tualatin, OR; the Woodstock Branch Multnomah County Library, Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, both in Portland, and Oregon State Hospital in Salem, OR. In 2017, she spent a month at the Playa Residency program in Summerlake, OR.

Desert Light

March 5 – May 16, 2020

Press Release