Margaret Devitt

After graduating from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, I started and ran a mohair weaving workshop in Lesotho for six years. In 1971 my family and I moved to London where I studied under Cecil Collins as well as attending life drawing at the Royal College of Art and The Prince's Trust. From 2008 I have been studying with Robin Child at his Art Research Centre in Devon, and more recently at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ireland.

I have accompanied my husband on his many trips to different parts of Africa, where I painted and drew the African landscape and people. This culminated in a series of desert landscapes which were exhibited in Guildford and London.

I have as both aspiration and inspiration the spontaneity found in the drawings of very young children. They are concentrated and direct, paradoxically and uncannily ‘accurate’ in what they convey and totally unselfconscious. But failing that ideal my work is underpinned by the tensions and dualities that exist between figuration and abstraction. I am searching for what I can only describe as ‘another reality’ below the surface of the everyday perceptions of a figure, still life or landscape. The painting may refer to a memory, or be a recollection of a piece of music or poetry. And sometimes it is simply playing with the endless possibilities of line, colour, form and medium on the two-dimensional surface.
Margaret Devitt, B.A. Fine Arts (Rand)


The Gallery Little Bedwyn
'More more than’ online exhibition with SVAF
Nadia Waterfield
South East Open Studios
Cello Factory, London, SVAF 10th anniversary exhibition
PrintFest7, Algarden, Sweden with SVAF
Sevenoaks Visual Arts Forum Open, Kaleidoscope Gallery
Seal Chart Etchers
Art in June
Cricket Fine Art
Cranbrook Art Show
Forton Fine Art
Smallhythe Studio
Llewellyn Alexander, London
British Art Portfolio
Chelsea Art Society Annual Open
Lustre 15, Lustre 18 Old Big School Gallery
Affordable Art Fair, London
Florum
KPG (Kent Painters Group)
Moncrieff Bray Gallery, Petworth
Portico Gallery, Sevenoaks
Battle Contemporary Art Fair
Rosvik Gallery, Little Bedwyn, Wiltshire
Royal London Society for the Blind, Sevenoaks
Clock House Gallery, Tonbridge
A.T. Kearney, London. Explorations: Out of this World
South East Open Studios
Atrium Gallery, London with London College of Printing
Lewis Elton Gallery, Guildford
West Kent Open Studios
Katima Mulilo, Namibia
St Mary’s Centenary Exhibition, Johannesburg
Bank Street Gallery, Sevenoaks
Central Library, Tunbridge Wells
Hays Wharf Galleria, London
Stag Theatre, Sevenoaks
St Julians, Sevenoaks
Mall Galleries, London
Church Gallery, London
Guys Hospital
St Julians, Sevenoaks
Guild of Kent Artists, Tonbridge
Bank Street Gallery
Sloane Square Tiles, London
Hugh Goffe, Sevenoaks
Old Fire Engine House, Ely
Hope Mill Gallery, Goudhurst
British Council Lesotho

ALL ARTWORK COPYRIGHT THE ARTIST