Maggie White
Oil-pastel artist and poet newly rooted in Fairfield, Iowa, by way of the Philadelphia region. Her practice began as a necessity: when speech felt narrow and social language failed, color opened a truer channel. Working primarily with oil pastels, Maggie quiets the analytical mind and follows sensation—intuition first, then repetition and improvisation—allowing images to assemble themselves across layered planes. The results feel cosmological: dense yet breathing, like sub-atomic worlds in dialogue. In parallel, her poetry arises from careful attention and craft, giving precise and often lyrical form to lived experience and memory.
A 2010 brain aneurysm, and a period of left-side paralysis, altered the terrain of expression; what could have closed a door instead widened the aperture. Making became ritual and renewal, and sharing work with community became part of the cure. Spiritually, Maggie draws from a constellation of influences—Buddhist, Taoist, nature-based, Hindu, and mythic lineages—without claiming a single tradition; for her, art and consciousness are congruent.
Current and future work includes a series of “stable yet progressing” abstract paintings, a 40-poem collection, and a novel loosely based on personal experience, alongside applications to MFA programs in poetry. Across page and surface, Maggie’s aim is constant: to let the work reveal itself, then meet it with presence.