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What is your work about?
My work is about what I read in the newspapers. My paintings find the nexus point where the political and spiritual confront each other.  They are informed by the combined influence of German expressionist figuration and color field abstraction (with all the political and spiritual underpinnings that these art movements imply).

More specifically?
Well, for example, I  have used paintings to look at ways that violence and sex are exploited in media — the  way a woman who is supposed to be sexually seductive is made to look like a victim of violence.  In other paintings I depicted the impersonal violence that is acted out on a national level.  “Dark Continent”  was adapted from a photograph that appeared in a news magazine.  In it, the soldiers, or policemen, are poised in attack against unseen victims.  It is an image that, unfortunately, does not go out of style.

By the gritty nature of your work, you could be accused of creating more of the very thing you claim to be against.
My art is not political propaganda but it is meant to be a disturber of the peace, a destroyer of shallow complacency. To do this, I use what fascinates me in what is at hand, in my own personal experience, in the popular culture around me.

My aesthetic task is to make paintings that move a person the way music or fragrance comforts, seduces, is fixed in the memory. If I succeed, the viewer will be spellbound.

These images are quite shocking, coming, as they do from a woman who is known to be an observant Jew — and a feminist.
Because my work is about sex and violence?  Biblical text is filled with sex and violence.  Anyway, in my paintings I also attempt to uncover the tremendous longing that people have for spiritual nourishment - what I think of as a desire for revelation.

In “Channel,”  a man is reaching out to adjust a television set,  The painting is entirely dark, except for the light emanating from the TV  screen.  It's as if he is reaching out for Gods light.

But yes, you are right, sometimes the work even shocks me.

Tell me about the Life Support paintings.
I originally did the preliminary work for these pieces as a way to pass time during the painful task of watching my mother die.  When I was drawing. I  was fully alert and engaged, but somehow protected as well, in my role as observer.

It was after her death, during the year of mourning that is observed in Jewish tradition, that I went back to my sketchbooks and journals.  The paintings that followed explore what is the spiritual as opposed to the physical nature of death?  And given our technological capabilities, how do we deal with the conflict between prolonging life and relieving suffering? Now I am working on a book about this sort of creative response to death and dying.

What do you find is the most difficult part of being an artist?
To struggle so hard to make good art and THEN have to worry also about earning a living from that work — because powerful art doesn't necessarily go well over the couch. And the aspect of the work that feels like a gift is sometimes destroyed in the struggle for legal tender.

Once I was complaining to a friend about how frustrated I felt about this.  I whined that I was afraid  no one would want to look at, much less buy, my paintings, because they are disturbing, or shocking or so sad.  He slammed his fist down and said, "But you can't have true spirituality without political consciousness!”  That statement still encourages me to face the anxiety that springs up when I confront the difficult material of my work.

Since coming to Israel, a country rich in  political and spiritual tension,
I spend more time observing the landscape and have been
discovering new images which spring from sources of knowledge
that are wonderfully nourishing and which soothe even while they challenge.

Come visit me in my studio and we'll talk more

The following sources contributed to this piece:

Phone interview with Professor Matthew Baigell, Rutgers University 1992

Studio interview with artist William Brice, Los Angeles, 1990

Studio interview with artist/critic  Peter Plagens, Los Angeles, 1986

Conversation with Rabbi Daniel Landes,
at the Anselm Keifer exhibit, MOCA,  Los Angeles, 1988

Art and Inspiration by Naomi Pfefferman
The Los Angeles Jewish Journal, March 29, 1991

Loyola Gallery Puts its Faith in Religious Art Exhibit by Lisbet Nilson
Calendar section, The Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1991

Modern Women Explain Return to Orthodoxy by Gary Libman
View section, The Los Angeles Times February 7, 1989

Margolis' Paintings Reflect Modern-day Alienation by Keith Dills
Telegram-Tribune, San Luis Obispo, December 19, 1987