practical magic

My painting style has evolved from a lifelong fascination with color and form, honed and tempered by the unforgiving disciplines of watercolor, airbrush, and ultimately, acrylics. My work is always a surprise to me. I might have a initial idea, like a particular color, or shape, or an essence that needs to be expressed, but both the actual painting process itself, and the finished art pieces are journeys for me. Much of my current work is about energetic terrain--what we sense in the non-physical realms, with our whole bodies. It‚s like mapping the terrain of the unconscious and super-conscious, with paint. I am currently studying and exploring the vibrational experience of various colors--in paint, in sound, and in healing, and my paintings are a record of that process.

I am amazed that our own subconscious "knowing" of information and emotion can appear on the canvas, in language understood by others. How can light, archetypal form, and countless energies present in the cosmos reveal their form in paint, and then be understood by other humans? How can the knowledge of our emotional bodies translate into color, line and form?

The act of artmaking is really a meditation process for me. It is an act of surrender, a method of entering another dimension and trusting the encounter that takes place in that unknown place. The connection back to the physical plane is through my body, as I allow paint, canvas, water, and miscellaneous tools to make the intangible concrete. My research, and personal experience, have shown me that specific colors affect our systems profoundly, and can be received by our systems in numerous ways: through the eyes, through actively working with the pigments, through light therapy, through meditation, and through visualized color imagery, just to name a few.

In addition to the initial process of painting, which is itself a consciousness transforming practice, I use the paintings for meditations with groups, and a number of healers use them in their healing practices as energetic tools to shift or access vibrational fields.
All my paintings are acrylic, on unprimed canvas.

Margaret Lindsey, MFA, is a Bay Area painter and teacher, who utilizes the practices of acrylic painting, individual creative mentoring, transformative art, and meditation to study and assist human consciousness, and as a way to experience the world and the human relationship with it.

She teaches process painting and art meditation, and guides workshops in consciousness studies at various schools in California, including JFKUniversity's Arts and Consciousness Program, and West Coast School of Feng Shui. These classes include in-depth color investigations like "The Color Experience", "Group Process", "Process Painting". She shows her work locally and nationally and collaborates with other artists and healers.

Above: Lindsey installing a floor piece • JFK University, CA • 1998