CONTEMPLATIONON EARTH, AIR, WATER

Opening: Second Friday, May 8, 5-8pm

Closing: May 29, 5-8pm

Gallery hours after opening: Thursdays 5-8pm, Saturdays 1-5pm

Liggett Studio is a located at 314 S Kenosha, Tulsa, OK 74120

This exhibit blends the abstract sculptures that are inspired by Scholar Stones, and paintings which invite the viewer to contemplate the changing seasons of the creek, hay fields and forests and life.

Margaret Aycock is a representational painter with a painterly leaning in the style of the American Post Impressionists. 

She grew up in the mountains of New York, but has lived in Oklahoma since the late 70s. It was her time living in nature that continues to influence her work, the thread of which connects her artistic endeavors, civic engagement, and her daily life.

Subject matter for Margaret’s work, much of which is done en plein aire, Includes the Osage prairie skies, Tahlequah farm land, and portraits of her friends and family.

She has worked with the  Tulsa Arts And Humanities Council for over twenty years, was Artist in Residence at Hillcrest Hospital for fifteen years, and taught oil painting for  adults for over thirty years. She is the author of two books on oil painting, and one children’s book, “Claire Goes Foraging" which she both wrote and illustrated.

Galleries in North Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado, and Tulsa have carried her work.

Her paintings are in the private collection of Trinity Episcopal Church (a portrait of Father Stephen Mckee, and another of Father Powers).  She was also commissioned to do a family portrait for the former editor and chief of the Tulsa World, Joe Worley.

Margaret Aycock Statement:

Since childhood, I have been drawn to the quiet places. Whether climbing the mountain before my home or wandering along the bank of the creek behind it. It is in those secluded spaces where I first experienced wonder, creativity, and gratitude. Today, they remain the places where I find my spark.

I am a lifelong student of the land. Under the guidance of the late Cherokee wildcrafter Jackie Dill, I began to see the "bounty beneath my feet." She reinforced what I already sensed, that we are part of an intricate connection to water, earth, and air, reinforcing my belief that we are not merely residents of this garden, but its tenders. Now, as a forager myself, I can no longer walk through the woods without actively observing. I see the abundance of trout lily, poke salet, and lamb‘s quarters; I recognize the medicinal herbs and the hidden clusters of wood ear and oyster mushrooms.

But this intimacy brings an ache. Joni Mitchell’s warning— you don’t know what you got till it’s gone —-they paved paradise and put up a parking lot—is a constant hum in my mind. In Oklahoma, I see the encroachment: massive poultry farms, the mechanical drone of data centers, and the chemical footprint of corporate agriculture. These forces threaten the very purity of the water and soil that sustain us.

When the weight of this feels overwhelming, I act. I write, I advocate, and educate. But perhaps my most vital act of resistance is to simply sit in nature with a brush and canvas. To be quiet, to be observant, and to be grateful. These paintings are the physical manifestations of those sacred moments.