Press Release

NEW ORLEANS - Heriard-Cimino Gallery presents “Writing to Alexandrie,” new paintings by Margaret Evangeline. This exhibition will be on view from April 3 – 28, 2010. A reception to meet the artist will be held on Saturday, April 3rd from 6 until 8 p.m. The public is invited. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 until 5, or by appointment.

In this new series, Writing to Alexandrie, Margaret Evangeline explores erotic power, recalling La Dame aux Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, where erotic capital leads to painful consequences. Evangeline uses the camellia as a visual metaphor, referencing the wound, love, and healing. The artist suggests the camellia as an intuitive diagram of cycles of time unfolding rather than the partitioning of linear time. The fusion of stories and geography ever continues as Evangeline considers this use of erotic power in relation to status, finance, nationality and position.

The camellia paintings consist of layers of deep, sensual colors in the foreground or background of the image and an overlaying of textural paint and drips. Other pieces in the exhibition have the iconic camellia on golden backgrounds, appearing to float in time and space. There are three images of an 18th century woman; each figure inferring a different persona. The alleged image is of Marie du Barry, consort to Louis XV--- the artist points out that the woman’s image could be that of a contemporary celebrity. The image was originally derived from a wax casting, later photographed, and then made into a serigraph by the artist. Evangeline adds to the fusion of intertwining geography and history by painting over the serigraphs, adding embellishments of camellias and quatrefoil outline. The three golden quatrefoil paintings hint of gold coins, possibly suggesting power. The artist interprets that these portraits, camellia paintings, and quatrefoils are bound together by the tension of their unrequited longing for union. The continuum ever-expanding.


Margaret Evangeline was born in Baton Rouge, LA, and lived in New Orleans before moving to New York in 1992. Evangeline received her M.F.A. and B.A. from the University of New Orleans. Evangeline has had more than forty solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad and has been awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the ART/OMI Foundation Artist in Residence. In 2008, Evangeline prepared a large site-specific installation on the River Thames in London on a barge across from the Tate Modern. Also in 2008, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, exhibited a mid-career survey of Margaret Evangeline’s work. A career spanning monogragh on Evangeline’s work, written by Edward Lucie-Smith, and introduction by David Houston, is scheduled to be published in 2011.