b'Universal Utopian:Margots Intuitive Pictorial InsightsThe work of Margot (b. 1982) provides access to a profoundly interesting inte-rior world. Her pictures are a compelling synthesis of bold compositional struc-ture and complex pictorial web of detail into which viewers are enticed and invited to lose themselves in imaginative wanderings. As such, Margots pictures speak clearly from a distance and, whether large or small in scale, they are en-veloping close up. They are at once like the decorated facades of great, spiritual buildings and the packed, illuminated pages of ancient books. Within the archi-tecture of the overall composition there is teeming life jostling cheek by jowl, displaying a horror vacui that is characteristic of much mediumistic, visionary and outsider art, from the likes of Augustin Lsage and Madge Gill, to Alex Grey and Adolf Wlfli. Margots technique is intuitive and based on automatic processes, with images bubbling up, as it were, from inner depths, or some cosmic realm not usually ac-cessible to everyday consciousness. These are not formless or sprawling works, though. There is a balance here between intuition and conscious intention that ensures visual cohesion. The pictures are tightly structured. The general archi-tecture is sketched out first using pencil and the area incrementally built up in ink, often in several layers of imagery. Nothing is fixed, though. When I go on to use ink, she says, lots of things also happen. Pencil strokes can change place. And the artist might return repeatedly to the same region of a drawing. Margot has described herself as a catalyst and says that when she works, Everything happens naturally. There is no distinct intention in doing such and such a thing. When I tell myself Hey, Ill have to do it like that, with a real in-tention to do it and control the creation, well, I cant manage. Im stuck. Con-7'