View Finder at Gallery 120

Artist Margi Grill Exhibition • January 15 through February 12, 2020

Margi Grill, a painter from St. Paul, Minnesota, is exhibiting View Finder at Gallery 120 on the campus of Inver Hills Community College. View Finder is a series of work that explores the ways a landscape is framed. Included in the oil and board paintings are the residential and commercial architecture that is usually cropped out of a photograph or intuitively eliminated.

Our effort of readjusting what we want to see is further tested with a window screen that hovers in front of each painting, resembling a traditional mat and picture frame. The exhibition runs from Wednesday, January 15, through Wednesday, February 12, 2020.

View Finder

Artist: Margi Grill

January 15 through February 12, 2020

Monday–Thursday: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Friday: Noon to 2 p.m.

Gallery 120

Fine Arts Building
Inver Hills Community College
2500 80th Street East
Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076
General: 651-450-3000
Gallery: 651-450-3101

Margi Grill bio

Margi Grill’s work documents how landscape exists in an urban environment. Inspired by ecological concerns of land-use and access to green spaces, each painting aims to start a conversation about our modern relationship to the natural world.

Margi was granted an Artist Participation Scholarship to Split Rock Arts Program in 2005. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus in painting and a Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Art History from the University of Minnesota.

Margi is currently experimenting with interactive installations that mimic her own sense of discovery and understanding. In March 2020, she will have a solo exhibition entitled Gone to Seed at Silverwood Park Gallery in St Anthony, Minnesota.

View more of Margi Grill’s work by visiting her website:

M Grill Painting

Or by following her on Instagram:

@mgrillpainting

Margi Grill artist statement

As an artist, I have focused my practice on reinterpreting traditional landscape painting to include the environments we experience everyday. I am drawn to areas where human-made spaces overlap with areas permitted to grow wild. I am also interested in how those boundaries have shifted through generations and continue to change.

My process involves diluting water-soluble oils to create a translucent wash and letting it spill over the surface. The landscapes I depict are built up through layers of color and texture with layers of observational drawing, wavering several times between precise realism and gestural abstraction.