Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Margaret Ude. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Margaret, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

One of my most meaningful projects to date was my Mural Mentorship with Dallas artist Marissa Caggiano.
Earlier this year, I was approached by a local artist about a mentorship and mural opportunity.
I connected with Marissa on Instagram and then we had a face to face meeting where she explained her practice and what the mentorship would entail.
I was a bit nervous at first because I had never completed a super large scale mural. It was a new realm for me.
The mentorship was designed to strengthen artist’s business literacy and give artist experience in completing and pricing mural work.
The main portion of the mentorship was designing and painting a mural for For Oak Cliff Community Center. This project was so meaningful to me because of all of the layers of work that went into the final product and the actual execution. I spent 5 months working alongside other artists, with the help of Marissa, to create a piece that people would feel invigorated and inspired by. There were so many proposals, long nights and paint swatches that went into creating this mural. This project really gave me an idea of all the planning and collaboration that is needed to make a public artwork successful.
The execution of the mural itself was always rewarding as well. While I would paint in the community center, I would have children and staff memeers appraoch me and either stare or ask question about what I was doing. It felt so rewarding to see people respond to my work to different degrrees.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have been invested in art and its expressions since I was in elementary school.
I fell in love with novels, story telling, world building and illustration as child exploring a library and that love grew to include the visual world.
My passion for art, however, was not truly nurtured until I was almost out of high school. I have always enjoyed creating artwork and falling into the materiality different mediums have to offer but I had never really looked beyond the idea of creation.
I was seriously considering what career path I wanted to take and what my true passion was. That’s when I finally settled on creating art, talking about art and making art more accessible for the people I interact with.

My current body of work focuses on the ways I sense my body (physically, emotionally, spiritually) in the different environments I interact with (school, chosen homes, public etc). When viewing my work it is important to understand that my Blackness and queerness are important to understanding my work. My Blackness has been a unifying and alienating identity that cannot invisiblize. My queerness was a welcome but previously hidden companion to my Blackness that has been freed through self exploration and introspection.
The worlds I create are born from the perspective I hold, the way I am treated in the locale I interact with and the relationships I form within that locale.
Understanding that, my intersectional identity creates a specific and unique perception to be showcased. I employ my identity and lived experience to inform my creative processes. The figures within my work interact with abstract settings to serve as symbols that highlight my experiences of alienation, inner chaos, confusion, sapphic passion and guilt. These odd and off-kilter figures represent the way I feel in space and the way I am perceived by others in space. These interpersonal worlds serve as moments of perception and snapshots of emotion. The figures that I include in my pieces are conduits for people I interact with and the worlds we create through our relationships.
Although these worlds don’t exist in objective reality, they are real and true because they represent genuine moments of lived experience, emotion and connection between my environment and I.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My current goal in my creative journey is to create art that touches the heart and making art, craft or creative practices more accessible. A lot of my artwork exposes my feelings to the public, wether they are overt or hidden and I think it provides a sense of humanity and vulnerability that cannot be fully conveyed through words. My mission to make art more accessible is simple. I just want people to be able to make art (whatever that may look like) without the expectation of skill or mastery. Creating art is cathartic and I feel like it teaches you about how you approach problems.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I knew about free online drawing resources and the power of speaking up. Online drawing resources like Line of Action make figure drawing and anatomy practice more accessible and less intimidating. As for speaking up, not being afraid to talk about your art and how much you enjoy your process of creating or what your art is about is one of the biggest investments you can make in yourself. Another one of my favorite resources is Artwork Archive. There are so many infographics and pages about managing motivation as an artist, keeping your discipline within your practice, and best business practice.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/art.bychijiago/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-ude-0aba2a281

Image Credits

Edgar Trevizo
Kevin Ligons