NORTHWEST WOMEN ARTISTS : 1880 — 2010
ID#:
1976.0048.000027
Description:
Margaret Tomkins
1916 — 2002
Twice Sun White, 1963
Oil on canvas
45 x 60 1/2 inches
Gift of the Virginia Wright Fund

During the late 1930s and 1940s, Margaret Tomkins established a national reputation as an abstract surrealist painter. Beginning in the 1960s, the artist created large expressionist paintings such as Twice Sun White (1963), which is made up of interlocking shapes in lighter colors applied with a palette knife. Her marriage to James FitzGerald (1910—1973), a prominent sculptor, stimulated her own body of three—dimensional art using the lost—wax method. Living in seclusion on Lopez Island until her death, Tomkins layered her later canvases with radiant shafts of pastel colors that reflect the artist's lifelong quest to balance internal and exterior realities.
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