< Back to Directory

Margaret Dowell

Painting, Visual / Media

Awards Received

Independent Artist

2021

I began my art career as an installation artist. Twelve years later I pursued drawing an honest line and created social commentary works addressing the likes of gender, violence and substance abuse. Time passed, I pursued truly seeing color and energy and ended here – creating representational oil paintings about heritage.
The making of Art for me has always been a continual search for the instant when the artwork takes on its own life. It is a physical, spiritual, intellectual and psychological process which can be simultaneously humbling and elating.

About the Artist

Margaret Dowell is an artist and art educator, teaching most recently for the College of Southern Maryland.  Her artworks have been included in many regional and national exhibitions   Currently painting Southern Maryland heritage subject matter in oils, her earlier paintings were social commentary in nature. She holds a Ph.D, (Curriculum and Instruction) and MFA (Installations) from the University of Maryland. 

Artist's Statement

  My personal history includes both laboring in the tobacco fields of Southern Maryland (Planting, cutting stripping 609) and High Academia (BA, MFA, PhD). An Art Educator by career, I most recently taught for the College of Southern Maryland.  A visual artist by fate, I began in my youth creating installations (shown mainly in Washington DC Universities and Art Centers), and then moved into painting mostly social commentary works in oils.  These works, addressing the likes of gender, violence, mental health, and addiction, were shown for decades in both solo and group exhibitions (invitational, juried, non-juried) – mostly in the Mid-Atlantic Region.  Today I paint representational oils about heritage.   If I have a lofty goal it would be that by painting the past influenced by the present the works could participate in examining the shaping of a more tolerable existence. In 2010 I co-edited a book, Addiction and Art (Johns Hopkins University Press) which received much attention including a Highly Commended Award from the British Medical Society.  That same year I founded the related website:  www.addictionandartorg.  For years, the site, like the book, has been devoted to the utilization of the visual arts to promote needed dialogue about substance abuse.  It includes an addiction and recovery download art gallery, a related K-12 curriculum guide, and an addiction and recovery art exhibition model. Related to this effort, my own paintings addressing substance abuse have been utilized in the press, calendars, and publications including on the cover of a Public Health Report, an Official Journal of the US Public Health Service and the US Surgeon General.

Featured Work

Photos

Calvert County Tobacco
In this time warp piece I painted a self portrait with a young man who worked the tobacco fields on the same land I did - but more than 100 years apart. I worked to help support my family, he worked to earn money to purchase his father's freedom (his father was enslaved on a neighboring farm). We both would go on to earn Ph.D. degrees.
I learned to bush hog at 60. It wasn't my idea - something life threw at me. I learned that a sheer pin doesn't look at all like a pin and that it can break. I learned that putting calcium chloride in tires can keep a mid-sized tractor from flipping over on a hill. And, I learned that ground bees are not your friends. For years I climbed on my tractor to bush hog overgrown fields until sapling and their stumps disintegrated. I was nervous at first (OK, sometimes downright scared) until I sensed I was not truly alone.
This panting is inspired by the heritage rose at Dowell Farm. A century old, this rose blooms for about 2 weeks in late May. It has a faint, lovely, unique aroma. And, it has no thorns.
A kitten is exposed to a mutilated deer.