BIO

The breathtaking Pacific Northwest surrounding Seattle is where Margaret Byrd calls home, but her artistic praxis spans the globe with a ‘studio’ built on mobility and designed for her nomadic soul.  Graduating from the University of Montana with a BFA in Photography, she discovered her love of mixed media and installation along the way and continues to explore both artforms in her studio today.  Wanderlust has kept Margaret traveling extensively where vast landscapes and naturally derived colors have inspired her artistic focus and visual aesthetic.  Weaving her creativity into a daily practice, Margaret is currently working with organically dyed fibers and dreaming up her next site-specific installation project.  Margaret’s work has been selected for juried exhibitions in the Pacific Northwest, shown in gallery spaces in Mexico, Svalbard, New York and California and purchased for both public and private permanent collections.   Returning to the lens in 2020 as a content creator, Margaret shares her creative journey on her YouTube channel, Margaret Byrd: Color Quest, building a community to celebrate organic color through hands-on tutorials and vlog-style film dedicated to nature's palette. 

Artist Statement

Being a multi-passionate creative means I'm curious about different mediums and always on a quest to experiment to see what inspiration trickles in. My fascination with raw material and color extracted from organic matter has been a constant in my art practice, so working with fiber and wax has been an exciting way to further probe the subtle beauty found in nature’s palette.  The variation of natural hues I’ve brewed from botanicals in Iceland, Mexico, Peru, Svalbard and my own backyard has provided a rich inventory of hand-dyed fiber that has inspired a series of texturally dynamic work on canvas and paper that is further enriched by the ethereal medium of wax. Each piece has a unique history embedded in its fiber based on the soil where its color was grown and harvested and is a living memory of the lands I’ve been lucky enough to explore. Through this practice, I’m honoring the symbiotic relationship I’m nurturing with Mother Earth and quietly giving thanks for her delightful bounty.