Bio / CV

Kristen Margiotta is a Delaware based oil painter, artist, and art educator with over 21 years of professional experience. In this time, she has exhibited in galleries nationwide, as well as expos and conventions,  illustrated picture books,  done commission work and much more. 

Fire, dripping pearl tears, and white lilies are abound in her work. Themes as transformation, love, and loss, are wound up as powerful amalgamations, birthing beautiful imagery with provocative messages. Her previous body of work focussed on “big eyed” characters in unsettling environments, which also crossed over into published children’s books for about fifteen years. 

Her work is heavily inspired by the old masters, and art history, specifically the drama of the Baroque era and devotional artwork, which she fuses with her own modern day interpretations and internal dialogue.

Margiotta often paints herself as subject, as well as people she is very close with, as their personal experiences, tie into her own. She is also known for her “alla prima” portrait paintings, a time honored tradition of painting models directly from life, with rapid, intentional brush strokes, completed in one session.

Margiotta travels to exhibit at various events, expos, and commissions, exhibits in galleries, and creates commissioned works for patrons. Her works are in private collections throughout the USA and abroad. 

Margiotta currently lives in Newark, Delaware with her boyfriend, and stray cat colony, where she works and teaches art privately from her home art studio.

“No one does RED like her ”- Scott Kirschner, painter, Arch Enemy Arts.

“Wonderfully painted, big-eyed, and dark ”- Ray Nichols, owner Lead Graffiti (Letterpress Studio).

“This was the most ambitious Delaware Fun-A-Day project I have seen completed  ”. - Monika Bullette, co-founder Delaware Fun-A-Day.

“ Kristen's children's book illustration style is completely unique. Cute, creepy, and full of minute detail, displaying Kristen's mastery of subtle light and shadow. When you see one of her originals, you know it's unmistakably hers.

Her fine art easel paintings are bold, predominantly red and black, and full of emotion brought forth with confident, succulent brushwork not unlike the bravura of the great John Singer Sargent. Kristen’s forte is portraiture and she captures the true spirit of her sitters along with their accurate likenesses. There’s an “old master” quality to these pieces, a chiaroscuro which demonstrates a knowledge of art history and a maturity in skill usually found in older artists.” - Mark Collins, Illustrator, Children's Book Author.