Margaret Lanzetta

Artist Statement

My mixed media paintings investigate world decorative traditions in relation to contemporary cultural and political narratives. I create work by collecting and collaging internationally sourced textiles and handmade Asian papers with painting and silkscreen. I combine these culturally resonant materials to create color-saturated, tactile paintings with colliding textures and finishes: matte silkscreened areas in contrast with metallic brocades, gold leaf or smooth silk. For me, the physical act of binding disparate materials is palliative, a way of processing reality.

My practice of living and working for long periods in India, Asia, and North Africa, since 2007, deeply influences my work. Working in temporary, shifting studios compels me to solidly bind and anchor materials. Buddhist meditation studies and Islamic geometry drive the mantra-like silkscreening and repetitive stripes in my work. Harnessing the language of textiles and global decorative traditions, my work also references notions of craft, geometric abstraction and the Pattern and Decoration movement.

Like Kurt Schwitters, who assembled fragments of materials to create unity after World War I devastation, I work to find order within a fractured world.