Margot McMahon

Your surfaces often hold light in a way that feels almost geological, as though the figure were weathered by time rather than modeled in studio; how conscious are you of light as an active collaborator, and do you conceive of shadow not simply as absence but as a structural counterform that completes the ethical and emotional architecture of the piece?
Light energizes my interpretations in clay as a collaborator to my textures and marks. Years of hiking in mountain landscapes, including my ancestors’ Adirondack homestead, informs my sculptural vocabulary. That scenery is not just a seemingly stationary mountain or range, but activated by the light and shadows moving across it.