Western-Wall-Art.com : About Outdoor and Wildlife artist Margaret La Bounty.

MARGARET LABOUNTY

From an early age, multifaceted artist Margaret LaBounty began developing a keen sense of awareness about her surroundings. Having explored the wide-open expanses of the great Southwest for a number of years, she and her husband John eventually made their home and built her gallery and studio known as -The Rock Speaks- In a remarkable place called Bluff, located in the southeastern corner of Utah. This region, more widely known as the Four Corners, is famous for its enormous rock art panels depicting ancient petroglyphic Imagery and serves as a great inspiration to the artist. "My work evokes the feeling of being there in the warm canyons amid the colors. textures and shapes. (wish to bring out images of a story living in the rock and the land while shaping a unique art form true to the Southwest." Through sensitive interpretations of serene space and the free movement of .animals, LaBounty seeks to preserve small slices of a fragile culture.

It is here at the edge of Navajoland, nestled between ancient walls of red rock and Anasazi ruins, where LaBounty draws from all that nature and history have to offer. Natural materials Indigenous to the area such as clay, wood, cactus, rock, and warm-tone metals of brass and copper continue their life cycle through the eyes, hands, and heart of this rare artisan.

Consistently challenging herself, LaBounty is known for creating unique tools from eclectic sources such as her famous Yucca paintbrushes, which, she says, bring more depth and stone-like texturing to both my ceramic work and my acrylic painting,. Perhaps best known for her high-fired, ceramic-on-copper wall reliefs, LaBounty describes the creative process as "beginning in her mind and working its way through her hands." in partnership with the earth, Margaret borrows natural oxides for color by gathering a variety of soils which she sifts, strains, and mixes with water. This mixture is then painted on to a clay palette and fired, thereby creating "test tiles, to determine color tones for blending. With sculpting pen in hand, the artist then applies her personally mastered technique to each piece. Such a synthesis of mind and artistic skill calls memories of place, texture, even the scent of clay – to create a one-of –a-kind, finished work.

Highly regarded for her replication work, some of Margaret's most Impressive commissioned pieces to date Include ceramic animal figures based on extensive research of ancient Hohokam "dogs" painstakingly uncovered by archaeologists In the Pueblo Grande excavation site near Phoenix, Arizona. These extraordinary pieces, which are sculpted, slipped, and pit-fired to acquire an ancient finish, have been ordered by museums and private collectors.

Never content to remain safely ensconced in any single category, LaBounty's prodigious artistic range will likely continue to expand and evolve along with her physical and spiritual explorations of time and place. Delightfully eccentric, she not only conveys multi-dimensional talent as an artist, but also as a human being and community activist, with a firmly established philosophy rooted in respect for the earth and for the Native American neighbors who call her friend, the mystery and culture of an earlier time will live on in the spirit of this artists work.

Margaret LaBounty has been represented by galleries throughout the Southwest. Her work has been purchased nationwide as well as internationally for private collections In Australia, Botswana, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Japan.