Margo Newmark Rosenbaum

Margo Newmark Rosenbaum has worked alongside her husband Art for over 50 years, using her camera to document his field recording sessions and other artistic endeavors. With a keen eye, she has captured intimate images of musicians, painters, collectors, and children. A selection of Margo’s photographs is on view in the North Gallery.

All the while, Margo has maintained a strong painting practice. She first studied under the legendary Bay Area Figurative artists Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff, earning a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute before continuing her studies in photography, earning her MA at the University of Iowa.

With a courageous palette and brushwork reminiscent of the German Expressionists, Margo’s mostly figurative paintings include commonplace and extraordinary animals: humans, horses, cats, and birds share space with dragons and a harpy.

Margo’s subject matter feels simultaneously autobiographical and universal. Holding Fire shows a woman in a white (wedding) gown glancing down and away from the viewer. Behind her, a sliver of a horse head seems to emerge from her veil, with eyes looking away the opposite direction. Adding psychological drama, a white dog glares straight at the viewer, as though sensing a threat, perhaps to the fire the woman is holding so tightly against her chest.

Margo’s scenes feel dream-like and invented. Woman in France with Cats is a memory from a visit to Paris – Margo sat with a sleeping woman as she passed away. Other scenes, such as the woman lying on the floor, her feet in a chair in Woman with Dog, feel more familiar. The artist has a gift for depicting the domestic and intimate as expansive and wild. Margo created these paintings over four decades, between 1984 and June 2022. - Beth Sale, Curator for Lyndon House Arts Center