MARGARET GARCIA

Paintings - Fire and Other Series

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.

Views of the Pueblos Series

Views of the Pueblo are Margaret’s paintings from the older Los Angeles neighborhoods within the boundaries of the original 27 sq.- mile Spanish Pueblo of Los Angeles, founded in 1789 by Fra. Junipero Serra and 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, a once-railroad community and one of Los Angele’s first suburbs, is 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.

Margaret Garcia Highland Park Studio Oil Painting Workshops

Margaret and a small cadre of oil painters meet Wednesday afternoons for her long-running oil painting workshops. Usually a model is provided. Models are friends, neighbors, artists, creatives and friends of friends. The workshop is open to oil painters. While workshop sessions are not teaching sessions, Margaret and other painters provide tips and always “throw down the gauntlet.”

Un Nuevo Mestizaje Series - 4 Decades of Painting her Community

Margaret wrote, in an essay for her USC Master’s exhibit at Plaza de la Raza (1992) - “Chicano art has definitely had a political birth. The self-awareness that came about in the late sixties and the struggle of the Farmworkers Movement affected me and made me aware of the need to make a contribution. I felt it was important to help define the Chicano community. The ability for a community to come together, otherwise negative stereotypes will persist. During this period I alway painted portraits.

Margaret continues this series to the present.