Wild Fridays: [Signpainters Pt3 - A tribute to Margaret Kilgallen]

Simon Wild continues his sign painting series with a tribute to San Francisco artist Margaret Kilgallen

Margaret Kilgallen, a contemporary artist from San Francisco who had a passion for sign painting, folk art and life.

No single artist has inspired me more than Margaret Kilgallen and rarely a week passes where I fail to look at her work and remind myself of her genius. Everything she created was skilfully hand painted directly onto the surface she was working on.

She died in 2001, at age 33, three weeks after the birth of Asha, her daughter with her husband and collaborator Barry McGee yet, during her short career she burned brightly, leaving behind an amazing and influential collection of graphic art. The ripples of which can still be felt today.

In 2013 I travelled to Boston to see Barry Mcgee’s retrospective show at the Institute of Contemporary Art. In the show was a shed that contained some of Margaret’s work. My heart stopped and it was the first time I cried in a gallery. I had experienced the sublime.

Margaret Kilgallen had always been described as a rising star at the time of her death, but she wasn’t too well known outside San Francisco until the do-it-yourself group of artists she was part of were the subject of the 2008 documentary Beautiful Losers.

They say you should never meet your heroes. For Margaret Kilgallen I would have made every exception and moved heaven and earth just to be in the same room. I never met her, yet I miss her every day.

During her short career she burned brightly, leaving behind an amazing and influential collection of graphic art. The ripples of her work can still be felt today.