Margaret Miriam Gohmann, MarGo, as she reinvented herself later, was born in Louisville, Kentucky  in the late summer of 1931.  

 

Growing up across the Ohio river in New Albany, Indiana to a pious Catholic family with deep roots to the local area, known then as Silver Hill. The family was hit hard in the Great Depression of the 1930”s.  Then young Margaret was stricken with Rheumatic Fever at 14 years of age. Her case was very bad and she hovered between life and death, with a high fever for a very long time before the then experimental drug, Penicillin, was employed to a miraculous result. Margaret recovered. During her convalescence she spends time drawing and painting. 

 

Returning to high school in the following September, Margaret excels academically and is later elected class valedictorian at graduation and is awarded a Phy Beta Kapa Key and a scholarship to IU.

Attracting positive feedback with her early attempts, Margaret was  spurred to create and her public ate it up and wanted more. As a teen Margaret taught a back yard art class for the neighborhood children which got her an article with pictures in the local paper.  Her high school art teacher recognized her talent and introduced young Margo to the art society scene of Louisville and they embraced her with shows at the Logason Gallery and her work sold.

 

She attended the art school in Bloomington Indiana, IU , where she studied painting and abstract expressionist. Thriving in this environment, she received a fellowship at the MacDowel Institute, and scholarship to the Skowhigan School in Maine. At the tail end of the summer after the program drew to a close and Margo was waiting to return home, she awoke to a hemorrhage in her right eye. Unable to obtain medical attention, she was forever partially blind in her right eye.

 

Determined to pursue her artistic talents she moves to New York City in 1957 and paints under Isabell Bishop in her Union Square studio. Frequenting the Cedar Bar scene and she rents a large loft like apartment in an old synagog building on Grand Street in the Lower East Side near the Bowery, where she lives for 15 years. Here she continued to paint. 

 

Married painter John Spoerri in 1959, a few years later children followed, first Stefan and then Johanna.  Margo, together with John worked in their own storefront space on East 59th creating tromp l’oil and pieces in molded acrylic for the public and she received prestigious commissions for portraits and commissioned pieces for interior designers with exclusive clients like the National Academy Of Science, and Jackie Onassis.

 

The demands of motherhood’s burden  had it effects on the free spirit and creative energy that fueled Margaret’s creative drive. Divorce followed and Margaret returned to the warm arms of academia and she now pursued a masters in education from Hunter College  and in psychotherapy at Bank Street. 

After graduating Hunter, she became an art teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School  in the day time and continued with a fledgling psychotherapy practice in the evening.

 

Securely employed, she was now able to purchase a home with a studio in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn..  This was a fun time and Margaret returned to painting in her new studio. Energized and inspired by visits to Mexico and witnessing the mystery of the ruins of the ancient Mezzo American cities. Margo feverishly  churning out a large body of oils, meshing her reflection of Max Ernst   with the imprinted visual memories of her Mexican sojourn with the psychedelic  spirt of the zeitgeist.  These paintings were exhibited at the Headley Witney Museum of Lexington KY.

 

    As a therapist in the 1970’s, Margo held a special role, hosting individuals and group therapy sessions in the living room,  on the weekends and evenings. In the mid 70’s, NYC facing economic pressures lays off mass numbers of teachers including  Margo.  Suddenly she had to rely on her part time psychotherapy for her sole means of support. She got an office in Manhattan,  just around the corner from Carneggy Hall  on 7th Avenue, and she expanded her business.  As a member of a professional psychotherapy institute, she gave talks at the New School for Social Research to packed audiences. She worked with the LGBT community before the name existed, specializing in working with  individuals with creative blocks, such as a ballet dancer with the Jofferey Ballet who had a fear of falling and an opera singer and a number Broadway performers, and even professional baseball players with marriage counseling and a world famous photographer.  Margo continued her practice until health problems interfered in the mid 90’s.

 

In the mid 1980’s Margo moved to a big house on the Delaware River in Cochecton, New York  following her dear friend and former neighbor from Grand Street, painter Willard Bond, who moved from the city to Barryville, NY.

Inspired by the landscape, Margo shifts her focus to scenes of the river and of her flower garden. In the summer, she brought her easel and paints out to the porch and garden and even as far as the fields and river banks. Margo’s tremendous creative energy results in many beautiful canvases. 

Participating in the local art community by first opening her studio to local studio tours, and solo and group shows at the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance an other local galleries.

 

At 65, in 1996, after a highly productive number of years, on a grey Easter Sunday, Margo awoke to another hemorrhage, in her other eye.  Macular degeneration, in both eyes.  She has lost the center of her vision, only peripheral vision remained.

 

A horribly sad time. The inability to read  and loss of income, sudden retirement and  financial collapse. She could no longer live alone in the country, and great adjustment occurred rapidly.

 

Forever the optimist, Margo reinvents herself. Giving up the big house, she moves to Narrowsburg, a small hamlet on the Delaware. Renting an apartment above a store front studio, Margo show off her many paintings and adjusts her style to a more abstracted style, looser and relying more on visual memory. She knew how to paint so she could continue.  Her sense of color remains and her compositional impulses going back to her days in abstract expressionism resurfaced, inspiring new images, first more expressionistic and then drifting back to the natural and landscape elements.

 

Living on Main Street Margo now enjoys life in town. Dining out at the local places and making friends with the shopkeepers and offering the public a cultural destination with her store front gallery, she makes many new friends, and sells many canvases and create many new paintings in her studio in the back, overlooking the Delaware.  Despite her new handicap Margo continues to create successful paintings and sold numerous canvases and even successful shows until her mid 70’s.  In 2013 her time on Main Street Narrowsburg came to a close as the building was sold and things changed. 

 

At this point  Margo was about 80 and just not that well anymore. Margo’s last paintings were very good but her last year of painting was 2015.

 

She passed away in January of 2019.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Margaret Miriam Gohmann, MarGo, as she reinvented herself later, was born in Louisville, Kentucky  in the late summer of 1931.  

 

Growing up across the Ohio river in New Albany, Indiana to a pious Catholic family with deep roots to the local area, known then as Silver Hill. The family was hit hard in the Great Depression of the 1930”s.  Then young Margaret was stricken with Rheumatic Fever at 14 years of age. Her case was very bad and she hovered between life and death, with a high fever for a very long time before the then experimental drug, Penicillin, was employed to a miraculous result. Margaret recovered. During her convalescence she spends time drawing and painting. 

 

Returning to high school in the following September, Margaret excels academically and is later elected class valedictorian at graduation and is awarded a Phy Beta Kapa Key and a scholarship to IU.

Attracting positive feedback with her early attempts, Margaret was  spurred to create and her public ate it up and wanted more. As a teen Margaret taught a back yard art class for the neighborhood children which got her an article with pictures in the local paper.  Her high school art teacher recognized her talent and introduced young Margo to the art society scene of Louisville and they embraced her with shows at the Logason Gallery and her work sold.

 

She attended the art school in Bloomington Indiana, IU , where she studied painting and abstract expressionist. Thriving in this environment, she received a fellowship at the MacDowel Institute, and scholarship to the Skowhigan School in Maine. At the tail end of the summer after the program drew to a close and Margo was waiting to return home, she awoke to a hemorrhage in her right eye. Unable to obtain medical attention, she was forever partially blind in her right eye.

 

Determined to pursue her artistic talents she moves to New York City in 1957 and paints under Isabell Bishop in her Union Square studio. Frequenting the Cedar Bar scene and she rents a large loft like apartment in an old synagog building on Grand Street in the Lower East Side near the Bowery, where she lives for 15 years. Here she continued to paint. 

 

Married painter John Spoerri in 1959, a few years later children followed, first Stefan and then Johanna.  Margo, together with John worked in their own storefront space on East 59th creating tromp l’oil and pieces in molded acrylic for the public and she received prestigious commissions for portraits and commissioned pieces for interior designers with exclusive clients like the National Academy Of Science, and Jackie Onassis.

 

The demands of motherhood’s burden  had it effects on the free spirit and creative energy that fueled Margaret’s creative drive. Divorce followed and Margaret returned to the warm arms of academia and she now pursued a masters in education from Hunter College  and in psychotherapy at Bank Street. 

After graduating Hunter, she became an art teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School  in the day time and continued with a fledgling psychotherapy practice in the evening.

 

Securely employed, she was now able to purchase a home with a studio in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn..  This was a fun time and Margaret returned to painting in her new studio. Energized and inspired by visits to Mexico and witnessing the mystery of the ruins of the ancient Mezzo American cities. Margo feverishly  churning out a large body of oils, meshing her reflection of Max Ernst   with the imprinted visual memories of her Mexican sojourn with the psychedelic  spirt of the zeitgeist.  These paintings were exhibited at the Headley Witney Museum of Lexington KY.

 

    As a therapist in the 1970’s, Margo held a special role, hosting individuals and group therapy sessions in the living room,  on the weekends and evenings. In the mid 70’s, NYC facing economic pressures lays off mass numbers of teachers including  Margo.  Suddenly she had to rely on her part time psychotherapy for her sole means of support. She got an office in Manhattan,  just around the corner from Carneggy Hall  on 7th Avenue, and she expanded her business.  As a member of a professional psychotherapy institute, she gave talks at the New School for Social Research to packed audiences. She worked with the LGBT community before the name existed, specializing in working with  individuals with creative blocks, such as a ballet dancer with the Jofferey Ballet who had a fear of falling and an opera singer and a number Broadway performers, and even professional baseball players with marriage counseling and a world famous photographer.  Margo continued her practice until health problems interfered in the mid 90’s.

 

In the mid 1980’s Margo moved to a big house on the Delaware River in Cochecton, New York  following her dear friend and former neighbor from Grand Street, painter Willard Bond, who moved from the city to Barryville, NY.

Inspired by the landscape, Margo shifts her focus to scenes of the river and of her flower garden. In the summer, she brought her easel and paints out to the porch and garden and even as far as the fields and river banks. Margo’s tremendous creative energy results in many beautiful canvases. 

Participating in the local art community by first opening her studio to local studio tours, and solo and group shows at the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance an other local galleries.

 

At 65, in 1996, after a highly productive number of years, on a grey Easter Sunday, Margo awoke to another hemorrhage, in her other eye.  Macular degeneration, in both eyes.  She has lost the center of her vision, only peripheral vision remained.

 

A horribly sad time. The inability to read  and loss of income, sudden retirement and  financial collapse. She could no longer live alone in the country, and great adjustment occurred rapidly.

 

Forever the optimist, Margo reinvents herself. Giving up the big house, she moves to Narrowsburg, a small hamlet on the Delaware. Renting an apartment above a store front studio, Margo show off her many paintings and adjusts her style to a more abstracted style, looser and relying more on visual memory. She knew how to paint so she could continue.  Her sense of color remains and her compositional impulses going back to her days in abstract expressionism resurfaced, inspiring new images, first more expressionistic and then drifting back to the natural and landscape elements.

 

Living on Main Street Margo now enjoys life in town. Dining out at the local places and making friends with the shopkeepers and offering the public a cultural destination with her store front gallery, she makes many new friends, and sells many canvases and create many new paintings in her studio in the back, overlooking the Delaware.  Despite her new handicap Margo continues to create successful paintings and sold numerous canvases and even successful shows until her mid 70’s.  In 2013 her time on Main Street Narrowsburg came to a close as the building was sold and things changed. 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point  Margo was about 80 and just not that well anymore. Margo’s last paintings were very good but her last year of painting was 2015.

 

She passed away in January of 2019.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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