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Margaret Scanlan ‘Synchronies’
Margaret Scanlan is a full-time studio painter from
Knoxville, Tennessee. A signature member of the
American Watercolor Society, the National Watercolor
Society, and the Watercolor USA Honor Society, she has
won numerous regional and national awards. Her work
is exhibited and held in private, corporate, and museum
collections in the United States and Europe.
During the past few years, Scanlan has privately
assembled her paintings into what she calls
‘synchronies,’ combining sometimes disparate imagery
into a single significant composition. The components
of this polyptych composition are not necessarily static,
but can be replaced.
One of Scanlan’s goals for these compositions is that
they will evolve. As components are plucked out and
purchased, she will replace them with other paintings
that may or may not relate to their precedents.
Scanlan’s ‘mentors’ for this work include:
- James Joyce, who used a different style for each
chapter in Ulysses;
- John Cage, whose compositions and etchings
often incorporated randomly selected elements;
- Gerhard Richter, whose work exhibits a plurality
of themes;
- Elizabeth Murray, whose polyptychs incorporate
many irregularly-shaped canvases into a
congruent whole and whose ‘whole oeuvre’ has
inspired Scanlan for many years.
An artist of national and international renown, Scanlan’s
makes paintings that are rich and strong in color and
technique, yet provide a place for calm contemplation.
Scanlan's work is in the permanent collection of the
Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama, the
Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Missouri, and in
numerous corporate and private collections in the
United States, England, Ireland and France.
Scanlan was born in St. Louis, Missouri and has a
Bachelor of Arts degree from Webster University where
she studied with sculptor Rudolph Torrini. She took a
graduate degree from the University of Tennessee,
where she had her first solo gallery exhibition in 1981.
The artist lives with her husband in Knoxville,
Tennessee.
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