From Erin Cluley Gallery:

"Flowers have been a frequent subject throughout MARGARET EVANGELINE’s near fifty years of painting – particularly the Camellia for its elegant, irregular circular layering and how it relates to the artist’s personal history. In her exhibition, A LIGHT BETWEEN LEAVES, Evangeline expands on this exploration by including flora found in her garden, especially those with a more momentary bloom. As she paints, she cradles the plants in her hand, creating a portrait of their shared existence and mortality while the flowers eventually begin to wilt. 

“I want them in that fresh moment,” Evangeline says of her plant subjects, which are mostly surrounded by naked canvas. This practice of non-finito, an intentional “unfinished” style, is her way of embracing the unresolvable in both her work and philosophy – viewed as a kind of balance, or mental awareness emphasizing our own instability.

Evangeline also utilizes the incomplete imagery as a method of capturing the color, speed, and atmosphere in an urgent and authentic way. Through a discourse which speaks not only to presence but also of absence, the artist characterizes the sensation of transience that moves through all things, including herself. In this way, the paintings employ the poetics of vacancy to consider the ever-pervading spirit of eternal return."