Ode to Odie - a Self Portrait
Margaret Ingles
- Sitter: Self Portrait
- Medium: Oil on Canvas
- Dimensions: 93cm x 120cm
- Representation: Lethbridge Gallery
- Categories: Female artist
About the artwork
In 2024, some of Margaret Ingles’ artworks left Earth and landed on the Moon, carried aboard Odysseus, the first United States spacecraft to land on the lunar surface in more than fifty years. Etched onto nanofiche as part of the Lunar Codex project, they are expected to remain intact for a billion years.
This self-portrait is her response to that journey. Ingles has placed herself on the lunar surface, seated at her easel, looking back at the Earth above her. Without a face, the figure becomes universal, an invitation to step into that solitude. Looking back at our Earth “is one of the most sobering images humanity has ever produced,” she reflects, “revealing the finitude and fragility of everything we have known or loved. It is a self-portrait, but also a meditation on what it means to be an artist and a temporary inhabitant of a fragile planet.”
About the artist
Margaret Ingles is a realist painter based in Noosa, exhibiting nationally and internationally for over 20 years. A largely self-taught artist, her work draws on realism and surrealism to explore psychological presence, transforming the familiar into the quietly extraordinary. She has work held in private collections internationally and is a finalist in numerous Australian art awards.
