MARGARET HUNTER  
         
 

 

 Margaret Hunter was born in 1948 in Ayrshire, Scotland. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art (1981 – 85) and under Professor Georg Baselitz at the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin and Scotland. Her programme of exhibitions is as extensive in the UK as it is in Germany: Berlin – Scotland – Transfer, Galerie IX, Berlin (1988), Stadtisches Museum, Halberstadt (1991), Changing Places, Collins Gallery, Strathclyde University and tour (1992 – 93), and Art First (1996, Vital Patterns 1998 and Elemental Traces 2000). Within a decade, work has entered the collections of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Scottish Arts Council, Robert Fleming & Co, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, London, and many corporate collections in Germany.

It was Margaret Hunter who described her own work, as well as Art First’s tendencies, as being "Afro-Hebredean". Primarily concerned with the human figure as a vehicle for expression, it took an encounter with the art of Georg Baselitz to reconnect Hunter with her own childhood memories of the art and culture of Nigeria.

She makes sculpture in wood, paints in richly textured oil on board or canvas, and produces constant series of drawings or ’ideas’ in pastel and charcoal. Themes and symbols evolve through the work as she explores a choreography of gestures that express states of mind or particular feelings. The graphic, physical nature of her art comes from an instinctive approach to the human body and an intuitive sense of freedom fostered by her interest in ’primitive’ art and expressionism in general.

The warmth and humanity in the work accompany a lively humour and a tremendous energy which animates every surface and quickly engages the viewer in Hunter’s lively formal language.