Macintosh Apples with Vase of Lime Leaves painting by Margaret Sparrow
Still Time
Fine Easel Paintings by Margaret Sparrow
at THE GALLERY at Central Vermont Medical Center
through January 2018
Berlin, Vt – Margaret Sparrow was born in 1953 in the Midwestern region of the United States to parents of English, German and Scotch ancestry. She was a solitary child and a mystery to her lovely parents. When quite young she discovered her great-grandparents library carefully boxed and stored in the attic. After reading a portion of a Thackeray novel she realized, all in a moment, that nothing was as it had seemed.
Margaret Sparrow
The world became an entirely different place – filled with vast and profound possibilities.
She made her first oil painting, secretly, in a large closet off her bedroom when she was fifteen. Encouraged by her teachers, she continued to paint. The director of the local art museum introduced her to modern painterly realism and the works of Robert Barnes, Leland Bell and Robert Weaver.
Margaret left home at age eighteen to attend the Kansas City Art Institute where she studied for two years under Michael Walling, Richard Pitts and Wilbur Niewald. She was awarded a full scholarship to a summer workshop in Lake Placid, NY and moved to Manhattan that fall to attend The New York Studio School. She studied primarily with Mercedes Matter and Peter Agostini. Critiques were given periodically by Phillip Guston and Esteban Vicente, both of whom were impressed and delighted by Ms. Sparrow’s early still lives. At the same time she enrolled in classes at The New School for Social Research to study Philosophy. Credit transfers from these two schools enabled her to graduate from The Kansas City Art Institute with a BFA in Painting in 1974.
Ms. Sparrow remained in New York for the next ten years, painting quietly and deliberately, working for a private bookseller, reading, attending performances at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and finding her friends among an older generation of cultured Europeans. She left Manhattan to avoid the ever increasing financial demands of the city. A friend offered her the use of his summer home on the island of Vinalhaven in Maine and with financial assistance from a private collector in New York she was able to live and paint for the next ten years. It was in Vinalhaven that she met Robert Indiana (the artist who designed, among other things, the Love logo in 1964) and formed a lasting friendship based largely on their intellectual interests and their mutual isolation. She remained closely attached to New York City.
Large Still Life with Swedish Chair, painting by Margaret Sparrow
In 1990 she met her future husband, Edward G. Sparrow, a Tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. They were married in 1995 in New York and moved to Vermont some time later. Margaret Sparrow now resides in northern Vermont.
Concerned with what is true, Margaret Sparrow has endeavored to create works of lasting value and genuine authenticity. The results are a relatively small number of fine easel paintings and works on paper, created with care and dedication. Hers has been, and continues to be, a very serious and very private quest, pursued with a compelling sense of wonder at the simple loveliness, mystery, and grandeur of the world which surrounds us.
“Throughout her career Margaret Sparrow has explored the beauty of still lifes and every day objects with her masterful handling of the painted surface and an often deceptively simple palette. I have always loved her interesting perspective and thick, dimensional brushwork. Her paintings find the grandeur and grace in common objects: the complexity of light reflecting off a plate, the sculptural forms of a white tablecloth or the simple curve of a shell.”
Megan Benitz, Director, Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St. Joseph, Missouri
Rarely shown, the paintings are represented in private collections and one public museum. They have never before been exhibited in Vermont. THE GALLERY at Central Vermont Medical Center is honored to share these paintings with the community.
THE GALLERY at Central Vermont Medical Center is located in the lobby of the hospital and is open every day. For more information on THE GALLERY at CVMC please contact Maureen O’Connor Burgess (802-279-6403) or moetown52@comcast.net.