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| Photo by Rob Wishart |
Longtime Ventura County water media artist and plein air painter Margy Gates has a new show at Gallery 28 at Seabridge, near in the Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard, on view until July 9th when it returns to Margy’s Sea Gate Gallery and Studio. The collection includes watercolors from the past and also presents seven new acrylic pieces, which highlight the show with their complex style and powerful colors. Margy admits these works are quite personal, and signal a sharp turn in her already eclectic style. Inspired after a very challenging year personally, the expository nature of the work is quite engaging and has generated great enthusiasm. Another eye-catching piece, “Night Flight” is a deeply hued acrylic, which Margy says “may be the beginning of a long-postponed multi-media abstract series of world views from aircraft at cruising altitude.”
Margy has been making art all her life. She holds a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, where she studied with some of the iconic painters of the time including Millard Sheets and Phil Dyke. In 1978 she and her husband, 2 of their 3 teenagers daughters, a cat, and a dog, moved aboard their 39-foot Overseas sailboat in the Channel Islands Marina. In short order, the kids graduated from high school and moved on, the cat and dog found other homes, and Margy and her husband Charlie lived happily for the next 24 years aboard s/v Malua at the base of the Whale’s Tail Restaurant.
For nearly 20 years her gallery and studio have been on the beach in a long, narrow space filled with treasures, dusted with sand from, and loaded with personality, snugged between a real estate office and the Rudder Room at the end of Ocean Drive in Hollywood-by-the-Sea.
“I usually wake up around 2am, pour a mug of coffee and head for the work table I have set up by the front window to work on my new acrylics. For me, that is the best time to explore linear gestures and color fields, to keep asking myself questions like: Why does a color scream in one situation and soothe in another? Where does a line end? Why is lavender a great solution when nothing else is working? And the music comes into my head through my iPod in stereo clarity, turns a color and flows out of my brush onto the canvas. When the sky starts to turn light, I go back to sleep for a few hours before my day begins.”
Gallery 28 at Seabridge is located just north of Hemlock Street at 1901 S. Victoria Suite 109, Oxnard. Call for directions at 805-985-1128. Gallery hours are Wed-Sun 11-6.
Sea Gate Art Gallery and Studio is located at 2925 Ocean Drive, Hollywood-by-the-Sea in Oxnard. Hours are (generally) Wed-Sun 11-5 or by appointment.
Stop by and see Margy’s’s work at the galleries listed above!
Margy Gates Art 