From a review by Guðbergur Bergsson 1994
about the show “Málverk” Paintings
Margrét Sveinsdóttir shows at Gallery II oil paintings she chooses to call “Paintings”.
If painters do not give their work names that describe the objective, but call them: Paintings, it implies of certain purity. Painting implies in itself painting. It is all in the texture and the colours, guides you inside to its reality, the act of painting, rather then the narrative, colours or forms. That sort of artwork don’t direct the viewer outside the picture plane so that he can lean on experiences in the reality and get an explanation from the material.
Margrét Sveinsdóttir is a picture-thinker. Nothing to recite happens in her work. But on the other hand there is much to interoperate in them. Those that are going to approach them, should rather peer into, breath them, rather then look at them. It doesn’t only contain the atmosphere of the colours, but the material contains colour upon colour, colour that lies behind the other colours, colours that lie underneath the surface colours.
Even if the main emphasis is placed on the nuance, then the material becomes the most domineering at first glance. The viewer might think that Margrét had been painting over old paintings, because she hadn’t been pleased with the result, or that she is directly hiding, implying, or awakening our desire to pry into what is already there but is not obvious.
The most predicable is most likely not the correct conclusion. The painting is permitted to be natural in the same manner as nature. In the same way as nature can, it can escape the viewer, the art enthusiast or the person that believes they are experts in the field of art. Such it the norm of the "Painting". It doesn’t even look for a buyer. The artist doesn’t even put a price on her artwork. The viewer has to come to it and be against the Painting or willing to follow it.
In this regard the sense of religion is not far from the content. One of the works even implied faith. On it was drawn a cross in a square. Jung talked about how the cross within certain traditions had been the symbol of fire and the suffering of human existence. To my best recollection then in the book Timeo by Platon the world-smith had fastened again the soul of the world together by stitching the splits together in such a way that the result was crux decusata. That cross seems to be in the paintings of the very fine person Margrét Sveinsdóttir. Yet she might put another meaning in it then MR. Jung.
Maybe she wouldn’t agree with Mr. Hebbel that said: “The main meaning of life from my perspective is to show my inner being in a symbolic way. “ I can spot something similar in Margréts method. That is why she is such thrill for the perception and the theory.