(New Orleans, LA) FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is pleased to announce the fifth solo exhibition of San Antonio-based artist Margaret Evangeline, entitled Inner Gardens. Evangeline’s impressive career spans an interdisciplinary spectrum from impassioned political allegories using photography, performance and enormous public installations, to introverted abstract oil-on-canvas “portraits”; reflective of an inner self coming to terms with the inner turmoil of submerged contradictions. Evangeline has employed the motif of the unfolding camellia flower in her art for more than two decades. This botanical motif parallels the mandala, referencing unfurling biomorphic and geometric worlds, depicting a dual state of repetition and proliferation.

The artist’s worlds, suggestive of her frame of mind, attempt to balance (however precariously) fantasy and realism, held in abeyance within uneasy alliance. The exhibition debuts nineteen of Evangeline’s abstract paintings completed over the last two years. The most recent works reflect her re-location (she prefers the term “uprooted”) from New York to Texas. This change of scenery has opened up a variety of sensorial avenues for Evangeline. San Antonio Orange (2024) designates another visual dialect with its shimmering, sun-bursting orb. This abstract painting suggests solar efflorescence and being in the warm embrace of Texan advocacies towards independence and self-reliance.

In her studio notes Evangeline writes “My decades of painting (abstract mark making) have been in the service of attempts toward my coming to terms with insufficiencies and frailties. Hilariously enough the very act of painting has made me a connoisseur of my vulnerabilities. They form the source-world of my art practice...”

Inner Gardens will be on view from 17 July through 31 August 2024 with an opening reception on Saturday 3 August coinciding with the 30th Anniversary of White Linen Night - the Arts District of New Orleans’ largest, annual event during the August First Saturday Gallery Openings from 5 – 9 PM.

For more information, press or sales inquiries please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on Facebook (@FerraraShowmanGallery), Twitter (@FerraraShowman), and Instagram (@FerraraShowmanGallery) via the hashtags: #MargaretEvangeline, #FerraraShowmanGallery, and #ArtsDistrictNewOrleans.

M A R G A R E T  E V A N G E L I N E

[lives & works - New York, NY ::: b.1943 - Baton Rouge, LA]

MARGARET EVANGELINE received her MFA from the University of New Orleans (UNO) in 1978, where she was the first woman to graduate from the program. Margaret studied with Calvin Harlan who introduced her to Robert Bly, a visiting artist to UNO. Bly’s translations of Kabir, the 15th century mystic poet, have influenced Margaret throughout her career. Throughout the 1960s and early ’70s, Margaret re-located numerous times with her three young children and Air Force pilot husband before moving to New Orleans. After receiving her MFA she established her painting practice in New Orleans, exhibiting at Gallery Simone Stern and then Jonathan Ferrara Gallery. She developed the Fine Arts Department and Gallery Program at Delgado Community College, where she continued to teach painting and life drawing courses until moving permanently to New York City in 1992.  Evangeline established her studio practice in Chelsea on the Hudson River in 1995 where she worked until 2015.

In New York City Margaret was represented by Stux Gallery (later Stux + Haller) until their closing in 2016. She currently exhibits with Kim Foster Gallery. Important exhibitions in New York included her videos as well as paintings, especially on the effects of Hurricane Katrina on family and friends. Her first monograph, Margaret Evangeline, was published by Charta in 2011. The project book Sabachthani (2012) documented a venture done in collaboration with servicemen in Iraq. This book led to the exhibition Sabachthani at The Eli and Edythe Broad Museum at Michigan State.  The installation was subsequently purchased by the museum. Some important group exhibitions throughout this period include: The Drawing Center, ACA Galleries, Taipei Fine Art Museum, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Art in General, and White Box Gallery. Some important solo exhibitions throughout Margaret’s career include: Shaw Center for the Arts, Louisiana State University, Palm Beach ICA, The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Museum, and Olin Gallery of Roanoke College. Important site-specific permanent installations include: The Fields Sculpture Park, Omi International Arts Center, and Michigan State University.

Margaret Evangeline was commissioned to make a site-specific painting in 2018 for Neevelgarde Building, Nieuwegein, Netherlands, and for 50 West a new residential building in Manhattan. Other commissions include a sculpture installed in London on the River Thames across from the Tate Modern. Her work is included in private and public collections in Australia, Canada, China, France, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands, and the UK.  She has participated in Art Fairs in the U.S. and Europe.