Margaret Koval

Margaret Koval: Disrupting Everyday Spaces

Koval’s paintings typically show recognizable elements of America’s built environments—such as
architecture, infrastructure, or street features —and renders them both unfamiliar and faintly exotic. Her imagery often borrows from surveillance photography. The high vantage points, obscured sight lines, and bright security lighting all work to heighten narrative uncertainty. The works’ physical presence embodies that sense of ambiguity. Paint is applied from the back of loose-weave linen, forcing pigment through to the front, where it emerges as loops or strands of paint resembling colored thread.

These extrusions evoke carpets, tapestries, or needlepoints, encouraging a visceral desire to touch. The beguiling surface – at once a textile, a photographic image and a painting – thus performs the irresolution that the work depicts.

About the Artist:
Margaret Koval earned her MA from the City Guilds of London Art School in 2010. In addition to her
artistic practice, Koval has an accomplished career as a multimedia producer, documentary filmmaker, and Emmy-winning broadcast journalist.