Bio
Margaret Lipsey, b. Michigan, USA 1975, painter, poet
I am a contemporary abstract painter based in Montreal, Canada. Through layered surfaces, color, gesture, and evolving geometric forms, I create paintings that explore transformation, emotional experience, and the spaces between structure and freedom.
My work has been exhibited throughout North America, including Art Expo New York, Scope New York, Red Dot Miami, SOFA Chicago, and Art Market San Francisco. It has been featured in publications including Visual Art Journal, Louvre Unbound, ArtSeen Magazine, Curatory, Circle Quarterly, and Artist Close Up, and is held in private collections internationally.
Through layered surfaces, color, gesture, and evolving geometric forms, I create paintings that explore transformation, emotional experience, and the relationship between structure and freedom.
In 2025–2027, I serve as a contributing artist to the Human Design Hotel project in Montreal, designing spaces that include my work for immersive hospitality environments. I continue to develop new bodies of work that investigate how color, movement, and abstraction can give form to lived experience.
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.
Working with acrylic, charcoal, pencil, and layered surfaces, I build compositions through intuition and response. Color functions as energy rather than description, creating tension, release, and movement across the surface. Layers accumulate, interrupt, and transform one another, leaving evidence of change, revision, and discovery.
At the center of my work is an ongoing interest in transformation. I am drawn to the moments when old identities, assumptions, and emotional patterns begin to shift, when what once felt fixed becomes fluid, and new possibilities emerge. Rather than depicting specific narratives, I create spaces where complexity, contradiction, and change can coexist.
My collections often move between containment and expansion, uncertainty and clarity, force and openness. Across these bodies of work, there is a consistent commitment to presence and honesty. The paintings do not seek to resolve emotional experience, but to remain with it long enough for something new to be revealed.
Recent work has begun bringing together materials, marks, and structures that have appeared throughout my practice over many years. Geometric forms emerge from layered fields of color and gesture, creating a dialogue between atmosphere and structure, intuition and intention. Through abstraction, I continue to explore how emotion can become movement, how experience can become insight, and how change can become visible.
Exhibitions
Magnetisme, Georges Laoun, February 2026
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
Emergence
SHOP
Wild Collection
SHOP