Artist Bio: Marjorie Moscowitz

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Marjorie Moskowitz did both her undergraduate and graduate work there at Washington University. She received an M.F.A. in Painting in 1979. Her work evolved from two dimensional abstraction, oil on canvas and paper, to minimal process pieces where paper was collaged onto fabric. The fabric was crushed to create an uneven surface similar to effects of wind blown sand. The work became more sculptural as she manipulated and shaped paper which was held together with fiberglass. The surfaces of these three-dimensional pieces were worked with a variety of media including paint, pastel, silk-screened paper, and polyester resin to create a lush and richly colorful surface. As this form developed it changed from more of a bass relief to sculpture that was dimensionally deeper and protruded from the wall, reminiscent of a topographical view from space.

The landscape paintings began as a result of a trip to Italy in 2000. They mark a re-awakening of her earlier pursuit of painting on canvas and paper and were a departure from the abstract sculptures shown on the East Coast and in the Mid-West for the last twenty years. The order imposed by people on landscape loses to nature's insistence to re-assert itself. Light infuses each countryside and town with a coloring as individual as each setting. This subject matter lends itself to a direct response and vigorous mark-making that is often less pre-meditated than reactive. Activated surface, abstract surface patterns and color, with which she has had a life long dialogue, have become as much a part of the work as is replication of site. A need to notate and record each environment particular to each setting became necessary to inform future finished works.

Margie Moskowitz has exhibited widely. She has shown work in New York at the Alexander Carlson Gallery, Frank Marino Gallery, and the Nell Gifford Gallery. In Chicago, she showed at Fairweather-Hardin and in Kansas City at Douglas Drake. In St. Louis she was represented first by the Carol Shapiro Gallery, then by the B.Z. Wagman Gallery and later the Tom Seghi Gallery. Her most recent exhibition was October 2004 at Ventura College in Gallery II entitled "Recent European Landscapes."