Paintings - Landscapes and Other Scenes

Cheech Marin, speaking about Margaret’s paintings

The other quality in Margaret’s work that I really appreciate—and it is why I collect paintings—is the quality of the paint. Paint is a wonderfully elastic medium that can be opaque or translucent, transparent or malleable, thick or thin. This is why paintings have to be seen in person. I learned this very early on in my art experience. I would go to museums at a very young age and get up as close as I possibly could to the paintings. It’s like having a really thick, wonderful sauce you can put on anything. The thickness of it, which has an essential Chicano quality. You can see this in her series of fire paintings. Of all the paintings in my collection, Margaret’s fire paintings are some of the strongest, done during various fire storms that plagued Southern California.

Fire Series

“I paint FIRE because in it’s terrible beauty it is mesmerizing and fierce, all consuming and electrifying. It is painful and takes no hostages. It is in my nature to confront what devastates me most. That is how I know to move forward.

When I met Rhett Beavers, a landscape architect, he said to me - the earth is a repository of our history. So I married him. Our relationship fueled these paintings of fire and my knowledge of climate change and regenerative practices that are actionable and life saving.

I was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles sits in basin that the indigenous called Valley of the Smoke. Wild fires are part of the natural conditions of this chaparral. A chaparral is not a desert as the Department of Water and Power has promoted.

Echo Park Series

The Echo Park Series is part of Margaret’s Views of the Pueblo Series of scenes of the older inner-city Los Angeles neighborhoods within the boundaries of the original 27 square-mile Spanish Pueblo of Los Angeles, founded in 1789 by Fra. Junipero Serra and 44 families from Sinaloa Mexico. Half of the original 44 families were Afro-Mexicano. These Pueblo neighborhoods consist of Echo Park, Boyle Heights, Downtown. Chinatown sand parts of Pico-Union. Highland Park, an adjacent, older railroad neighborhood and one of Los Angele’s first suburbs, is also included.

Margaret was born in Boyle Heights, lives in Echo Park and works in Highland Park, all Pueblo or Pueblo-adjacent neighborhoods. Her muses are close to home… Much, though not all, of her landscape works are views or places within the Pueblo. Some are painted en Plein Fire.

Echo Park is Margaret’s muse.

Beyond the Pueblo