Margaret Parsons

Margaret Parsons, from Slidell, Louisiana, is a visual artist whose work centers on somatic experience. She creates figurative drawings in a wide range of materials, from colored pencil to forged steel. Her pieces are an investigation into body-language— how visual art speaks directly to physical and emotional states of being. Inspired by the lush, ever-shifting South Louisiana coast, she uses fluid lines to blur human forms with their natural landscape. Her narrative compositions and distorted proportions subtly incorporate and reflect on changes perceived in her surrounding landscape, such as storms and rampant industrialization. She graduated from Pacific NW College of Art in 2016, and has since taught visual arts and shown her work around New Orleans, in shows such as The Lucky Art Fair, and in public spaces such as the Lafitte Greenway. From 2021-2023 she was an artist-in-residence at The Steel Yard in Providence, RI, where she continued to develop a body of work centered around movement and fluidity with site-specific pieces. Her latest drawings are part of a developing series that speaks to her curiosity and reverence for living where water, land, and the body are inextricably connected.