Artist Peggy Doig will be featured at the Village Gallery of Local Artists during the month of February. A longstanding member of the gallery and resident of the Village of Oak Creek, Peggy’s paintings convey her intense connection with Nature. Applying pigment in ink, oil, pastel, and acrylic on wood, canvas and fine art paper, Peggy distills the extraordinary in ordinary things with a distinctive style. She explains, “Nature teaches me to be aware of inner stillness and intense aliveness that I attempt to express in art. Life is made of little things: the touch of a friend’s hand, the whisker brush on your leg or the quiet sleeping tree in winter.  The vital miracle of life is all around us. I live for this feeling and long to share it in art.”

As a child, Peggy remembers being mesmerized by paintings while waiting for her mom to pick her up from art classes at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York. Clay, paint, paper, and charcoal connected her to a silent realm outside that wove seamlessly with her vividly colored dreams at night.

Peggy’s early life was strongly influenced by her parent’s professions in medicine, and so she chose to study science.  Peggy went to college at Niagara University in New York.  From there she was in a graduate Ph.D. program in Toxicology at the University of Rochester but left the program to travel across the US with an Indy 500 car racing team. Peggy completed a degree in Forensic Science at UC Berkeley studying detection and effect of marijuana in a human body at UCSF medical center.  After graduating in 1988 she entered the corporate world and then moved to the FDA. Her work took her to Belgium and Scotland, Southern Spain, Carney islands, Russia, England, Ireland, Holland, Morocco, and India.

Over time, art moved in to fill the vacuums when changes occurred in Peggy’s life, and she has been a full-time artist since 2005.  Peggy studied at the Austin Museum of Art and the Spruill Center for the Arts in Marietta, Georgia. She learned that any amount of skill could not pass for the spontaneous expression of Life that speaks to the world in a compelling art piece.

The public is invited to meet Peggy Doig at a reception on Friday, February 1 from 5-8PM. Refreshments will be served and other member artists of the gallery will also be in attendance. The Village Gallery is located at 6512 State Route 179 in the Village of Oak Creek at the roundabout on SR 179 and Cortez. For more information call 284-1416 or visit www.sedonalocalartists.com.