Biography
Margaret La Farge, born in Providence, Rhode Island, attended Skidmore College for two years before transferring to the Rhode Island School of Design and majoring in sculpture. After graduating in 1974, she began working as a book illustrator for publishing companies such as Houghton Mifflin Co., Henry Holt and Company, and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Her illustrations in A Shovelful of Earth received Honorable Mention for The New York Academy of Sciences Children's Science Book Award.
During that time she also exhibited her paintings and sculptures in galleries around New England and later in Iowa where she lived for three years. In the 1980's she taught at a private school in Connecticut for several years and later received a masters degree in Education from the University of Maine in Orono before returning to the studio full time in 2003. Her work has been sold nationally and in Canada.
Ms. La Farge has created images in a variety of media but her most recent work includes watercolor paintings and graphite drawings. Images are intimately rendered and share a central focus in personal stories that draw from her spiritual and emotional relationship to family, history, place and time. Works are often composed around particular themes.
She has currently been illustrating Birds in Winter (2023) and Birds at Rest (2024) by Roger Pasquier and Birds of Rhode Island, Seasonal Distribution and Ecological History (2024) by Richard L.Ferren and edited by Richard R. Veit.
Other published illustrations include Ospreys: A Natural and Unnatural History by Alan Poole (1989); The Complete Birder, A Guide to Better Birding by Jack Connor (1988); A Shovelful of Earth by Lorus and Margery Milne (1987); Pack, Band, and Colony, The World of Social Animals by Judith and Herbert Kohl (1983); The Audubon Encyclopedia of North American Birds by John Terres (1980); The Evolution of Culture in Animals by John Bonner (1980); Watching Birds by Roger Pasquier (1977); Penquins, Past and Present by George G Simpson (1976).
Education
| M.Ed. (1994) | University of Maine, Orono, ME Individualized Major: Environmental Design in Art Education |
| B.F.A. (1974) | Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI Major: Sculpture |
| (1968-1970) | Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Major: Art |