Coastal Sites

"Margaret Rinkovsky's paintings are referential to landscapes. For this artist, nature serves as the stimulus for her oeuvre, not as a literal reflection but as a private and personal interpretive experience." This quote, by George Neubert, former curator at the SFMOMA, aptly describes my ongoing approach to the landscape, specifically to Coastal Sites Series which attempts to explore memory of a place, both personal and cultural. My Coastal Sites Series began in 2016 after I saw the large traveling exhibition of Joseph Mallord William Turner. His art has been a consistent source of inspiration for my approach to landscape painting. While in graduate school I received a Ford Foundation Travel Grant to reseach Turner watercolors at the British Museum in London. My "Coastal Site, #12, Temple Fragment," 2021, is based on observations of the Santa Cruz harbor and a memory of a Turner watercolor, "Temple of Poseidon at Sunion, Cape Colonna," 1834. All of the paintings in this series have a similar experiential origin based on memory, observation and art historical reference.