About Margy Gates

California-born, Margy has spent much of her life in and on the sea, as an observer, painter, sailor, snorkeler and beachcomber. She is the owner and curator of the Sea Gate Art Gallery on the sand at Hollywood-by-the-Sea.

Margy has been painting the ocean since she moved onto a sailboat in the mid-seventies.

She loves to travel and much of her work is painted on location in the South Pacific, Europe, China, Costa Rica, Hawaii and in the Southwest. Her gallery holds a rich collection of watercolors, with subjects ranging from the ocean waves to village rooftops, from the lush landscape of her beloved Fiji Islands to the streets of Paris. When she is not diving the reef, or working at her land-based home at Channel Islands Harbor, she can be found in her sometimes chaotic but always delightful gallery, way at the back by the window that looks out on Anacapa Island, perhaps doing a boat portrait for a local sailor or planning a mural.

She prefers to start work on location, en plein air, amid the annoyances and challenges of wind and changing light. There she comes closest to capturing moments in time with their internal rhythms and complex surfaces. She attempts to paint the image so that even though it is caught on paper, it has the sense of continuing to move, to change. She has a wide range of subject matter, but some of her favorites are the forms of forces of nature, winter storm waves, horses and coral reefs.