GALERIST

🏵️ Margaret R. Thompson
Peribolos, 2026
Oil and beeswax on linen
76 × 61 cm

A painting from an automatic drawing of an alchemical vessel which I’ve recently learned can be a metaphor for guardianship of secrets. Each time you unscrew the top a bit and share with others before the process is complete, your potion can weaken. Sometimes things are meant to stay within for awhile. We immediately run to our friends to talk things through but what about trusting ourselves first. The Peribolos is a wall encompassing a sacred space that acts as a barrier of protection. Here it’s a vessel that could also be a body within which purest form things are generated and safe. This painting was made imagining the cistern at also as a Peribolos, safeguarding the work that happens when we are free to confront the unconscious in protected spaces.

On view at Margaret R. Thompson’s “Temenos: The Inland Sea”, in the subterranean chambers of curated by .

Installation view and artwork photo credit: Hadiye Cangökçe