Bio
Margi Smith is a contemporary abstract artist whose emotionally charged paintings explore memory, healing, and human connection. Through vibrant color, bold texture, and intuitive mark-making, she creates original abstract art that speaks directly to the heart of the viewer. Her expressive abstract paintings emerge from fearless honesty and instinct — drawing from childhood memories, unspoken emotions, and personal reflection to transform canvas into sanctuary. By surrendering to what she calls the "messiness of the message," Margi lets intuition lead. The result is contemporary abstract art alive with emotional resonance: longing, joy, grief, beauty, and healing, all held within a single composition.
Collectors are drawn to Margi's work not only for its dynamic composition and rich color, but for its power to create connection. Installed in private homes, modern offices, or curated collections, each original painting transforms a space and invites the viewer into a deeply personal experience. Many collectors describe feeling seen — discovering their own stories reflected back at them.
She minored in studio art while at Skidmore College and went into the advertising business for a few decades. In 2008, after attending a transformative workshop with Flora Bowley, she decided to commit herself to exploring acrylic abstraction with boldness and emotional honesty and discovered a way of creating that bypassed rigid control, inviting spontaneity, movement, and vulnerability into her work. It marked the beginning of her ongoing relationship with art as a space where physical expression, emotional release, and creative risk converge.
Playfulness and experimentation became cornerstones of her practice — surrendering to the outcome and the natural progression of each piece. This openness allowed her to tap into deeper layers of her personal narrative, using art to uncover and articulate the emotions stored in the body, not just the mind. Painting became an act of trust, a way of letting her inner stories flow into the open space of the canvas.
For Margi, the magic lies in this surrender. Her art is a bridge that can inspire reflection and conversation, a catalyst for the kind of emotional recognition that resonates beyond words. By leaning into uncertainty, these transformative moments anchor her work: moments where creativity shifts from self-expression into shared human experience. Her work often invites viewers into this kind of exchange, encouraging them to pause, feel, and recognize the depth of their own responses. This is the art of possibility — the mysterious alchemy that occurs when paint on canvas becomes a shared emotional experience.
Artists such as Kandinsky, Joan Mitchell, Jodie King, and David Mankin have also shaped her sensibilities, offering examples of how abstraction can carry emotional weight and narrative depth.
Her work can be found at Gallery House in SOWA in Boston, MA; Art League of Hilton Head; Beaufort Art Association; Ogunquit Art Association; Metzy's Restaurant; and Newburyport Art Association.
Margi is a member of NAWA (National Association of Women Artists), AAGNE (Abstract Artists Group of New England), NEEAG, and The Art League of Hilton Head.