According to Margo Selski, balance has been a reoccurring theme in her work for more than two decades. “On a narrative level, balance is something that modern people, especially women, struggle with: I am a working artist; I have three young children; I teach at a university; I have a menagerie of pets in my home; I am a homemaker; and somewhere in there, I have to try to be me as well,” explains Selski. “Balancing all these different competitors for the limited hours in my day is difficult, as it is for many women. On a theoretical level, balance is something that characterizes my work.”
Sometimes the balances within the work become uncertain. “Relationships become inverted. Mothers become children. Children become empty eggs. Princesses become wolves. Eggs, children, families, all start to divide and become something unrecognizable,” she elaborates.
During graduate school in Minnesota, Selski created a “recipe” for faux craquelure, smearing her paintings with beeswax and freezing them. She then painted in the cracks with oil and beeswax to mimic Renaissance painting, creating an aged quality. Today she has modified the technique using dental tools to scratch the cracks into the surface.
“We previewed a few artworks of Margo’s with special collectors and they were immediately drawn to her unique technique, imaginative figures, and the untold story she offered the viewer. We are thrilled to have her work in the gallery,” says Richard Demato, owner of New York-based Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery, which represents her work.
Her paintings will hang in the galley through December beginning with an opening on November 24.