Bio
Margaret Lipsey is a contemporary abstract painter whose work explores the architecture of emotion through color, movement, and layered gesture. Based in Montreal, she creates paintings that embody presence and activate the emotional intelligence of a space. Each piece carries a distinct frequency that invites viewers into a deeper relationship with their own inner landscape.
Her practice integrates a refined aesthetic sensibility with a profound understanding of emotional awareness. Through bold chromatic fields, gestural motion, and carefully built layers, Lipsey transforms internal states into visual form. Her work is recognized for its clarity, resonance, and its ability to shift the atmosphere of a room, grounding it in strength, honesty, and quiet power.
Lipsey’s paintings have been exhibited across Canada and the United States. Her work has been featured in Visual Art Journal, Curatory Magazine, ArtSeen, Circle Quarterly, Artist CloseUp, and other publications. Her recent solo exhibition with ARTWRK.ca titled Unsilenced concluded in September 2025. Her paintings are held in private collections across North America and internationally.
In addition to her visual practice, Lipsey brings a deep understanding of energetic and somatic awareness to her work. As an experienced Reiki practitioner and Human Design consultant, she approaches artmaking as a conversation between the body, emotion, and intuitive intelligence. This integration informs the movement, texture, and luminosity that define her paintings.
Lipsey is currently contributing to the Human Design Hotel project as an Activator, creating paintings that anchor the energies of the Solar Plexus and Root centers within immersive and thoughtfully designed environments.
Her work continues to evolve through a commitment to presence, precision, and the understanding that art carries the capacity to shift consciousness. Each painting becomes a meeting point between color and awareness, stillness and momentum, shadow and expansion.
Artist Statement
My practice is rooted in emotionally driven abstraction. I work from the belief that emotion is not something to be illustrated or explained, but something that can be carried through color, movement, and form. In my paintings, feeling becomes physical, translated into a visual language that remains open, direct, and experiential.
I work intuitively, allowing gesture, pressure, and rhythm to guide the surface. Color is central to this process. It functions as energy rather than description, building tension, release, and movement across the canvas. Layers accumulate, interrupt, and respond to one another, creating compositions that hold intensity without resolving it. The work often lives in this space, where emotion is present and sustained rather than softened or clarified.
As a Black woman working in abstraction, my practice resists narrow narratives of representation while remaining deeply connected to lived experience. Abstraction allows me to speak without translation, to hold complexity, rage, tenderness, and resilience without fixing them into a single story. The paintings do not depict events or identities directly, but they are shaped by the emotional realities of moving through the world in this body, at this time.
My collections often shift in tone, from containment and self-recognition to force, refusal, and openness. Across these bodies of work, there is a consistent commitment to honesty and presence. I am interested in what happens when emotion is allowed to exist fully on the surface, without apology or performance. The work does not seek balance for its own sake, nor does it aim to comfort. Instead, it invites sustained looking and embodied response.
Painting is both an act of processing and an act of assertion. Each work is a space where feeling is given form and allowed to stand. Viewers are not asked to interpret or decode meaning, but to encounter the work on its own terms and notice what arises in that meeting.
In my practice, emotion becomes color and movement, translated into the universal language of abstraction. It is a language that holds multiplicity, presence, and truth without requiring explanation.
Exhibitions
Material Memory, Twist Gallery, November 2025
Women’s Art Society Fall exhibition, October 2025
Fires of Autumn, Artists In Montreal exhibition, October 2025
Unsilenced, solo, ARTWRK.ca, September 2025
Inaugural Exhibition, Viva Vida, September 2025
Layers (All Women Exhibition), Cater Art Gallery, August 2025
Art Sur Papier, Galerie Erga, June 2025
Prelude, Cater Art Gallery, May 2025
Momentum, Women’s Art Society of Montreal, May 2025
She, Cater Art Gallery Montreal, March 2025
The Language of Abstraction, Conversations with Artists, online March 2025
The Deepest Hue, Cater Art Gallery, Montreal February 2025
Creativity, EK Voland, Montreal 2024
Noir, Wall Candy Ottawa 2023
Sweetly Affordable Art, Wall Candy, Ottawa 2023
Featured Artist for Black History Month, West Elm Montreal, February 2023
Noir, Wall Candy, Ottawa, October 2022
Seen, Roaring Artist gallery, October 2022
Le Board Show, Hampton Gallery, August 2022
Italian Festival, Arte Cavallo, August 2022
Solo exhibition, Arte Cavallo, Montreal, April 2022
Radix MTL Exhibition, Montreal, November 2021
Old Brewery Mission, Solo exhibition, Montreal, August - October 2021
Square Foot Exhibition, Senneville, QC, 2019
Wall Candy Exhibition, Ottawa, ON, 2019
Art for Autism with the Miriam Foundation, Museum of Fine Art, Montreal, 2019
Solo Exhibition, L'Apartement, Westmount with Damask et Dentelle, 2019
Group Exhibition, Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Montreal, 2019
Abstraction Exhibition, Cutler Crane Gallery, Memphis, 2019
SOFA Expo, Chicago, 2018
Pop Up Gallery at Coach House in Westmount, Quebec with Avenue Art, 2018
Art Market Hamptons, 2018
Art Market San Francisco, 2018
Art Expo New York, 2018
Art Boca Raton, 2018
Scope New York, 2018
The Love of Art Exhibition with Avenue Art, 2018
Art Palm Beach, 2018
Papier Exhibition with MJ Laberge Gallery, 2017
Gallery Opening with MJ Laberge Gallery (Palm Beach), 2017
Pop Up Gallery at Westmount Square with Avenue Art, Montreal, 2017
Red Dot Miami, 2017
The Artist for Peace Project, Montreal, 2017
Art San Diego, 2017
Collective Exhibition MJ Laberge Gallery, Montreal, September, 2017
Textures and Shades , Solo exhibition, Carre des Artistes, Montreal, June, 2017
Apéro en Chocolat hosted by Mangeons Montréal February {Live Painting in Chocolate and Exhibition}, Montreal, 2017
Je t'Aime en Chocolat February {Live Painting in Chocolate and Exhibition}, Montreal, 2017
Radix MTL Exhibiton, Montreal, September, 2016
Essie Gel Couture Launch, Toronto, June {Live Painting in Acrylic - 11 canvases}, 2016
House of SB Launch Event, Montreal, May {Live Painting in Acrylic}, 2016
Ogilvy's, Montreal, April {Live Painting in Chocolate}. 2016
Je t'Aime en Chocolat, Montreal, February {Live Painting in Chocolate and Exhibition}, 2016
Paper Exhibition with MJ Laberge Gallery, Montreal, February, 2016
Collective Exhibition with MJ Laberge Gallery, Montreal, January, 2016
Design Projects
Human Design Hotel, Montreal, Activator and Contributing Artist, 2025-2026
Publications
Visual Art Journal, Cover August 2025
AATONU, August 2025
Louvre Unbound, July 2025
Curatory, Summer 2025
Art Seen, Summer 2025
Conversations with Artists, Summer 2025
Elegant Wedding - Refreshing Black and Green Wedding Shower - Magazine Feature - 2019
Wedluxe - Greenhouse Glam - Magazine Feature - 2019
Pop up Shops
West Elm Montreal
October 2019
December 2019
Pottery Barn Toronto
June 2018
December 2016
May 2016
September 2017
West Elm Chelsea, NY
June 2017
October 2017
Pottery Barn Chelsea, NY
June 2017
Pottery Barn Flatiron, NY Opening Weekend September 2017
Pottery Barn Quartier Dix30
November 2016
March 2017
HRVST, Montreal
December 2016
Williams Sonoma Home Toronto
December 2016
5 a Chic {Private Shopping event}
September 2016
West Elm Montreal
December 2015
May and November 2016
May 2017
SHOP
Wild Collection
SHOP
Borders Not Limits
SHOP