About me

Margarethe Brummermann loves to draw on her background in the life sciences in her work as a watercolor painter. Born and raised in Dortmund, Germany, she received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Biology from the Ruhr University of Bochum and the Max-Planck Institute in Bad Nauheim, Germany. She worked as a researcher and teacher at universities and field stations in France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Norway, New Zealand, and the United States and is now associated with the Entomology Department of the University of Arizona as well as running her own consulting business for natural history resources.

Parallel to her science career she developed her artistic talents. In Europe she had access to art museums and collections at an early age. As a teenager, she studied life drawing and etching at the Academy for Photography and Design in Dortmund, illustrated articles for an equestrian magazine, and experimented with many different media: sculpture, batik, oil paintings, and photographs. Today, watercolors are her preferred medium. In Arizona she refined her skills through studies at the Scottsdale Artists School, and with instructors like Jim Kosvanec, Kevin McPhearson, Raleigh Kinney, and Matt Smith.  She also spent three years in Laguna Beach, where she studied the work of the California Impressionists and Plein Air Painters.  In 2002 she and her husband Randall Kaul settled with four dogs and two cats in the pristine desert of the Tucson Mountains. The plant and animal life of her little desert preserve are the best inspiration for her paintings. The models for all of her cactus flowers and agave portraits are growing right in her backyard. Lizards, rabbits and squirrels, as well as the neighbors’ horses, drop in regularly to have their portraits taken. 

Most finished paintings are based on a number of life sketches and her own photographs. While Margarethe adheres to the principles of traditional transparent watercolor, she pushes the medium using strong contrast and chiaroscuro, because as an immigrant from a northern climate she experiences the stark light and shadow of the desert sun as her most interesting challenge.

Insect Collages: With its diversity of habitats and temperate as well as tropical climate characteristics and the resulting diversity of insect species, Arizona has become a Mecca for bug enthusiasts and entomologists. Since 2007 Margarethe has been working on photographic field guides to beetles of the region. Traveling mountain ranges and deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, Southern California and northern Sonora, Mexico, she has collected, identified and photographed more than 1800 species of beetles on a clean white background. Several of those species are rare and have never been photographed before. The images are all based on living specimens, and many images required stacking (digitally combining elements of several photos with different focal points).

Single images are then grouped in various ways for different purposes: geographically for display in local schools or B&Bs, phylogenetically for use in the field guide, or artistically for use as wall decorations.

Representation: Margarethe’s paintings are hanging in private and corporate collections in Europe, Israel, India, Japan, Australia, and the USA. Her work has been exhibited in juried exhibitions in most western states. She has received numerous awards from, among others, the Western Art Show of the Phippen Museum, the Grumbacher Gold Medallion Show in Prescott, and “The Best and the Brightest” of the Scottsdale Artists School.

            Prints of her work can be found at the gift shops of the Tubac Center for the Arts, Tohono Chul Park in Tucson, the Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon, the Feminine Mystique Gallery in Tubac, and the Artists’ Gallery of Patagonia, AZ.

Contact: Please call (520-682-2837) or email (mbrummermann@comcast.net) for prices and availability of original watercolors.

Giclee prints of all paintings are available in standard and custom sizes.

Giclee printing services are offered on paper or canvas.

Shows and exhibits: please check the 'Events' page of this blog.