MARGARET GILL

Ms. Gill first came to Maine from Connecticut as an anthropology student, doing archeological fieldwork on North Haven. She came back to live and paint the Maine coast. Her work combines the visual elements of a scene into an iconic vista. Margaret Gill works in both pastel and oils. She first drew her inspiration from the marshes and quiet back waters, but in recent years has shifted her focus to the interaction of ocean and shoreline. The complexity of light and form refracted through the lens of water is one of the great challenges to a marine painter.

About her work, she says:
"With the emergence of chaos theory in the early 1980's, science and computer modeling combined to identify the fractal geometry of natural forms. This confirmed what landscape and marinescape painters had long observed and recorded: the underlying order in even the most seemingly random phenomena. The observable patterns that coalesce from the interaction of sea, land, and sky are a continuing source of fascination to me. If the behavior of humankind, their actions, and reactions must forever remain opaque to us (as it would seem), I am comforted by the knowledge that the natural world, described by the visual testimony of the artist, is a stable and beautiful place in which to live."