Margot Dermody
Margot Dermody (b. Takoma Park, MD) is an artist based in Pittsburgh, PA. Her current solo exhibition, The Way of Peace, Forward and Back, is in the Pittsburgh Federal Courthouse lobby, Art in the Courthouse, through April 15, 2023. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, Stories to be Told, Art Mum’s (2023); Chromatic, PxP Contemporary Gallery, (2022); Stronger Together, Art Mum’s (2022); Alone, Together, the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh (2021); Full Circle, Concept Art Gallery (2021); and the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh 107th Annual Exhibition at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, (2019-2020). She has also shown in the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Gallery, William Pitt Union, Gallery One | Collective Works, and the Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media.
Recently, she was awarded Idea Furnace sessions in the Artist Residency Program at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, where she continues to work as a studio artist. Bringing together elements of the natural world with human emotion in painting, sculpture, and photography, her works span a wide range from a neutral monochromatic palette to a more explicitly vivid and affective narrative.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Consisting primarily of painting and sculpture, my practice uses abstraction to process memories and explore connections between human emotion and the natural world. Experiences of survival and growth lead to a search for self-understanding and open up an instinctive relationship to the process of making. This work constitutes not a metaphor but an intuitive mapping of a search for energy and lightness within my body and its psychological relationship to memory, love, and material.
Material transformation and play allow me to engage in an internal excavation of self and suggest concealed aspects of my personal narrative. It is a daily process of breathing in freshness to explore the curiosity and awe I have with nature and humanity. Combining forms through their most elemental properties, I am invested in my work with constant courage and integrity to be vulnerable.
Informed by changing conditions of light and texture, the surfaces often focus on a slightly unstable or transitory condition between the states of different elements, such as stone and glass, or layers of paint. The dance of making marks—considering them, and responding to them—is an integral aspect of my process. Exploring personal consciousness through the impact of light and shadow, each composition creates a space in which an internal feeling is barely gestured to–just beyond visibility or naming. The resulting paintings and sculptures create tension between minimal and overworked areas through building up, scraping down, and alternating intensity. In abstract layers of opacity and translucency, my works ask how to locate beauty in the shadows and bring light into life.