Magdalen Catherine Mowery is a freelance artist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She graduated with honors from Millersville University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts. In more recent years, she has been taking classes at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design in downtown Lancaster. Maggie hopes to continue expanding her creative horizons through further education. “I love learning new things. I don’t think that I’d ever want to get to the point where I’ve learned it all, even if that were possible,” the artist says.

For the past several years, Maggie has been making most of her living doing desktop publishing and computer graphics, but on a more personal level her artistic focus is always changing. She enjoys everything from painting and printmaking to collage work, photography, and sculpting with clay. She utilizes many traditional tools, in addition to the computer, in the hope of achieving her goals. The subjects of her art are also diverse. “I often like to create things that are whimsical in nature. Even when the subject matter may at first appear serious, I usually strive to be playful with it. There is so much sadness in the world. My art is my way of coping with that fact,” she says. Maggie has traveled quite a bit throughout the United States searching for new and exciting subject matter. In 2001, she even took a trip to Australia where she was very glad to find that the arts are held in high regard.

Even when Maggie was young, she wanted to be an artist. As a little girl she spent much of her free time alone in her room working on some sort of new creation. As an adult, the artist is striving to become a more active participant in the art community. That is one of the reasons that she continues to take classes. “I very much appreciate the company of other artists, especially while they are working. Seeing what other people are creating inspires me to try new things. Making art is the act of taking something as intangible as an idea and struggling with it until you have an actual physical thing sitting in front of you. I think that that is amazing, and watching someone else go through the process is sometimes as satisfying as when I go through it myself.