Bio / CV

Kristen Margiotta is a Delaware based contemporary oil painter whose passion for art is pervasive throughout her lifestyle. For over fifteen years, she has been exhibiting and selling her work, illustrating books, and actively participating in her local art community. She has been an instructor of art since that time, instructing at a variety of locations including at the college level. 

Margiotta has exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and was represented by the Pop Gallery, Santa Fe, NM for a decade. Her oil paintings are found in the homes of private collectors across the country, ranging from collectors of animation and cartoon art, to dark art, pop surrealism, and realism. She was host of Oddball Art Hall in Wilmington, DE for seven years along with a colleague, which is a unique event combining art show, live painting, and music, which forged and unified the local and regional art community. Her most recent exhibitions included Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco and The Convent, Philly, PA.

Margiotta has transitioned from her big eyed gallery paintings and illustration work that she has built her career on the last 15 years, into more traditional, realistic and narrative oil painting.  She’s also returned to portrait painting, working directly from live models using the direct method of "alla prima" oil painting.  Her return to realism is a reflection of events that unfolded in her personal life and her desire to explore the complexities of the world and beyond. 

Strength, raw human emotion, and the color red pervade her work. She claims art imitates life and vice versa, and paints what comes from her heart. Part of her evolution as a person and an artist is unfolding and emerging through her recent work. Margiotta's viewers are often quoted as saying they can feel the drama unfolding in the painting, like a movie in motion.

Margiotta instructs private art lessons at her home studio, and instructed art for over 15 years. She is currently working towards expanding to online teaching for adults via blog, tutorial videos and more. Stay tuned!

“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.