Margo Humphrey: A Vibrant Lifetime Chronicled In Lush Works On Paper

The David Driskell Center at the University of Maryland has mounted a show of the work of Margo Humphrey that must be seen by afficionados of the art of printmaking and anyone else who loves vibrant in-your-face color and the energy of art that reflects a richly idiosyncratic personal vision. It’s that good.

Margo Humphrey has been making prints – mostly stone lithographs, a difficult and dying technique – for more than 40 years. While she is academically credentialled with a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts and an MFA from Stanford, plus a faculty appointment at the University of Maryland, her work has the immediacy and subjectivity characteristic of the naïve, or “outsider”, artist. Nor does it for a moment seem forced. This is the work of a woman who has been able since childhood to access and express her individual world and lush imagination. Each piece is teeming with fecund (I love that word) imagery, thick with figures, objects and designs, pushing through the edge of the picture plane.

We managed to arrive just as Ms. Humphrey was beginning her discussion. She’s the person you wished you had for your favorite auntie and the person who had to make this work: animated, energetic, full of life and without pretense. She said that her objective is to "give things a soul and make them come alive" and I would have to say that she has accomplished that goal in many of her prints. So what are you waiting for?

Her Story: Margo Humphrey. Lithographs and Works on Paper surveys the career of the renowned printmaker Margo Humphrey. Works representing more than 40 years of the artist’s practice will be on view from February 4 through March 12, 2010 at the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland. Her Story was jointly curated by the Center’s Executive Director, Dr. Robert E. Steele, and curator, Dr. Adrienne L. Childs. The Driskell Center’s gallery is located at 1207 Cole Student Activities Building, at the University of Maryland.