Paintings - Landscapes and Other Scenes

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 and Chinatown. 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