About Margot
I’ve always been interested in the things that people choose to remember.
I’m Margot Mulvey, a painter and photographer drawn to the animals, places, and objects that become meaningful parts of our lives.
Long before painting became the center of my creative practice, I was documenting the world with my camera. Over time, painting became another way of doing the same thing, only slower, more tactile, and with a little less control.
A creative life, in progress
Mixed Media Study - 2014
At heart, I am a rule follower, a math and science girl who likes knowing there is a correct answer and that I can find it. Creativity has always been there too, showing up in funny ways. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered “a carnival face painter.” My mom and I sewed dresses for Christmas, I arranged and rearranged my bedroom, and drew plans for my future home.
In high school, the art room became my home base. Everywhere else, I was succeeding because I followed the rules and found the right answer. The art room asked me to do almost the opposite. The assignment was rarely just to complete the prompt. Instead, we were asked to reinterpret it, push the limits, and see what else it could become
Photography came most naturally, and it became my first serious medium. I also drew, built, experimented with mixed media, and even dabbled in painting, though it was too out of control for me at the time. Art was harder for me than the other subjects in school. I liked the challenge of not knowing the answer.
Self Portrait, Digital Photograph - 2014
Scholastic Art Awards - Silver Key Portfolio - 2016
Learning to make
When I arrived at the Savannah College of Art and Design, I thought largely like a photographer. Once I got there, the definition of what I could make expanded rapidly.
I studied photography alongside drawing, painting, printmaking, fibers, 2D and 3D design, and other processes that pushed me far beyond the mediums I was comfortable with. I photographed farms and the people whose lives were tied to them, made portraits, built installations, wove with raw fibers and beach wood, constructed garments and objects. I experimented and experimented and experimented.
The work changed constantly, but the things I was drawn to didn’t. People at work. Animals. Landscapes. Ordinary objects. The evidence of life lived in a particular place.
SCAD taught me that a single idea could be communicated in a million ways. More than anything, those years taught me to pay attention and to keep making.
Long before I knew what my future work would look like, I was learning what I wanted it to be about.
Hand-embroidered flannel lined linen overalls -
Fall 2019
Still Life from Direct Observation - Oil on Canvas - Fall 2018
Self Portrait - Oil on Canvas - Fall 2018
Aerial Map - Weaving - Fall 2019
Alexander Hall - Charcoal - Fall 2016
Making for people
After college, making became less about assignments and more a part of everyday life.
I make quilts for my nieces, nephews, and friends' children. I mend clothes, make things for people's homes, draw little illustrations and cards, and usually figure out how to say yes when someone comes to me with an idea and asks if I can help.
In an effort to honor the lives of special animals, I began painting memorial portraits as gifts for friends who had lost theirs, working from photographs to make something tangible they could keep. At the same time, I found myself returning to the places and memories of my own life, making work about home that would eventually become Artifact of Aurora.
None of it felt like a single body of work at the time. A quilt, a horse portrait, and a painting of home seemed like entirely different things. What connected them was the reason I was making them.
They were things made for people, made to remember, made to use, and made to keep.
The work now
Over time, the things I was making began to find their way toward one another.
I kept painting animals. I kept returning to homes, landscapes, and the objects people attach meaning to. Artifact of Aurora gave me a place to explore my own relationship with memory and home, while commissions continued to let me step into those stories for other people.
The mediums still change. I paint in watercolor, acrylic, and oil, work on raw and stretched canvas, and occasionally find myself painting something that was never intended to be a surface at all. I still sew, photograph, mend, collect, and experiment. I don't think I ever really learned how to stay in one lane.
What has become clearer is what I want the work to do.
I want to make things that preserve the animals, places, objects, and stories people don't want to forget.
Margot Mulvey is a home for that work. Some of it is commissioned. Some begins with my own memories. Some is simply made because I couldn't stop thinking about it. Some is simply made because I couldn't stop thinking about it. Together, it is a practice built around paying attention to what matters and making something from it worth keeping.
Still making.
I don't know exactly what this work will look like ten years from now, and I hope I never do.
What I do know is that I want to keep paying attention, keep experimenting, and keep making things that mean something to the people who live with them.
Thank you for being here.
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