Artists

Margot Koch

Margot Koch was born in Los Angeles California, grew up in the Hollywoodhills and has lived most of her life in the Bay Area. She has worked as a propfabricator, window designer, set painter, faux finisher, costume designer, bookillustrator and art teacher, as well as a fine artist, painting primarily in oils. Herwork is informed by many years of Zen practice, as well as studies at the College of Marin, UC Berkeley, UCLA, brush painting with Kaz Tanahashi, and “drawing from the inside out” at Michael Markowitz’s 23rd Street studio.She has shown paintings in juried exhibitions and solo shows in Northern California and LA and her work is in private collections in Austria, Los Angeles, Portland, Boston, Vermont, New York, San Francisco and Santa Fe. She currently resides in Mendocino, California.

“Painting is a quiet teacher, but demanding. To begin it asks that I be still, wait, and open myself to something as yet entirely beyond my understanding. It’s as though from the start a painting must have reason of its own to exist, yet requires me to discover what that is. It asks for faith, and in response I find myself rooting around in nature, constantly stumbling and always astonished as I search for something; a glimpse of lines I feel might, or maybe even must run between each cell and the dark holes in space between the stars. Equal respect exists for the critical interaction between some basic materials: water, oil, pigment.. and other elements like drying time, friction, heat, and then the relationship necessary to the hand, muscles and nerves tracking their way all the way up to the eyes and electric glitter of my brain. So I work. Any process but this one seems to produce nothing more than decorative art that I haven’t time for now. Upon completion of a painting, I want to hear it take a breath. Its first breath. (Gratitude for that concept to my fine painting teacher of art, Chester Arnold.)”

website: breakingeggstudio.com