Art
MAR 2025
“Youth”
“I experience the world in the present moment. I don’t have an overarching philosophy. Each day I try to seek out magic and strange beauty, to look beneath the surface of things and constantly practice unveiling. To get rid of filtered down consciousness and stay curious. Also to just be a good person. To be kind, to love.”
New Mexico-based artist, Margaret R. Thompson, has been on my radar for a while and I’m so excited to finally share her work with you in this edition of Funga. Her magical paintings fuse spirituality, symbolism and a profound awe for the natural world. Deeply connected to her surroundings, Thompson frequently paints outdoors, allowing the ever-shifting landscape to inform her work.
Her paintings, often reminiscent of ancient myths or portals to unseen realms, invite the viewer into a dreamlike dimension. What I love about her work is that she incorporates raw materials such as earth, sand and spices into her pigments, which create a special visual language that vibrates with energy.
Thompson earned her BA in Visual Arts and International Studies from Eckerd College. Her recent exhibitions include I Look at the Moon Like a Fellow Traveller at Lamb Gallery in London, Hawthorn and the Feast of Julian at Arusha Gallery in New York, Midsummer at Tyger Tyger Gallery in North Carolina, Secret Garden at Wilder Gallery in London, and Seven Surfaces at Red Arrow Gallery in Tennessee.
Margaret R. Thompson
Thompson’s journey as an artist began in childhood, where she would create elaborate chalk murals on her grandfather’s patio in New Mexico and fill the pages of her baby diaries with marker drawings. Throughout school, she was constantly sketching, and although she studied art in college, she found academic assignments restrictive, preferring to follow her creative impulses. After college, she moved to Mexico’s Yucatán region, where she painted symbolic imagery across the walls of her jungle home. She later relocated to Baltimore, where she explored abstraction through words and house paint. It wasn’t until she secured her first studio space in Oakland, California, in 2019 that she realized the necessity of making art consistently. That period became a turning point, reviving her creative spirit and setting the foundation for her prolific artistic practice.
Thompson describes her artistic process as an intuitive exchange with her surroundings, absorbing visual and emotional stimuli from nature and human interactions. She often wanders, seeking inspiration through spontaneous encounters and travel. Her paintings feature a personal lexicon of symbols – messenger birds, albatross suns, monad flower bursts, candle flames that act as gateways to a universal language. Through these symbols, she hopes to create an inviting space for viewers, breaking down the often-intimidating barriers of the art world.
Stardrop Island
Bel Canto
“Bel Canto, “beautiful song / beautiful singing” in opera is what I thought of when making this piece. The earth rising in song to meet the cosmos and spirit birds descending into a falling sun. Nature creates marvelous operas in the sky and space that can bring wonder to our lives. These experiences remind me of the magical web of existence we are all a part of. The bird for me is the animal I keep coming back to in many of my paintings. No matter where I am in the world or whatever the season, there is always a bird flight and song close by.”
Living in New Mexico has profoundly shaped Thompson’s artistic perspective. She describes the landscape as a place of vast silence, allowing her thoughts to flow freely. The intense natural elements – the scorching heat, shifting light, and wild expanses – have become ingrained in her work. The landscape commands respect, and its raw beauty has an undeniable presence in her paintings, regardless of where she creates them.
Wildflower
High Desert Hermitage, 2024
Monastery of the Heart, 2024
Thompson’s participation in I Look to the Moon Like a Fellow Traveler at Lamb Gallery was deeply aligned with her own ritualistic practice. The two paintings she contributed stemmed from an annual journey she takes to Big Bend, Texas, where she spends a week immersed in the land’s geology, creating art under the full moon. This experience mirrored the themes of the exhibition, emphasizing synchronicity between nature and artistic creation.
Venidero, 2024
Harbinger, 2024
Thompson finds inspiration in the Surrealist movement, particularly the works of female artists like Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and Leonor Fini. She resonates with Surrealism’s embrace of the fantastical and its rejection of convention. Drawing connections to transcendentalist desert painters such as Agnes Pelton, Thompson employs psychic automatism exercises to reveal shapes and energy flows, incorporating dream imagery and unconscious narratives into her work. She believes that art has the power to provide an escape and offer transformative experiences, particularly in times of crisis.
Pilgrimage In Deep Time
The House Protects The Dreamer
“In the past decade I have moved 18 times, always seeking whispers of comfort and grounding. It was in constant flux that home became not by a place I inhabited but a space shaped by my thoughts, memories and desires. Finally I live in a home I hope to be in for some time, with a studio and walls that shelter the mind and offer a safe space to dream. In this place, we can go as we are and not be questioned. We can sit in rocking chairs by candlelight in silence, closing our eyes, or we can address big issues that we want to rival and change in this world. And when we fill this place with care and adorn its identity with cherished objects and conversation with those we love, the soul of the home becomes visible, and this is what I paint.”
Rather than adhering to a fixed philosophy, Thompson embraces life as an unfolding journey. She strives to uncover magic and hidden beauty in the everyday, maintaining a sense of wonder and curiosity. To her, the act of unveiling deeper truths is an essential practice and one that requires both awareness and kindness.
Somatic Mirage
The Three
Skychasing at 9 Point Mesa
Having recently moved from the desert countryside to downtown Santa Fe, she finds herself energized by her new surroundings. With a freshly stretched canvas waiting for her next brushstroke, she looks forward to continuing her exploration of the unknown, one painting at a time.
Through her richly symbolic, intuitive approach to painting, Margaret R. Thompson transports viewers into mystical worlds, inviting them to connect with the unseen forces that shape our existence.
Again, The Gemini Are In The Yucca
“This is a painting about a reunion with a year-long shadow, 12 months between two full moons. It is about finding places that immerse you in a world of poetic imagination and the beauty of nature. It is about returning to spaces that are your sanctuaries, and who you are when you grant yourself these worlds.”
