7
The 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, Margot’s 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 Lésage and Madge Gill, to Alex 
Grey and Adolf Wölfli. 
Margot’s 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, I’ll have to do it like that,’ with a real in­
tention to do it and control the creation, well, I can’t manage. I’m stuck.” Con­
Universal Utopian:  
Margot’s Intuitive 
Pictorial Insights

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