Galerie Sechs Featured Artist

Margaret Larmuth is a South African artist based in Switzerland whose practice explores the intricate interconnections between human experience and the plant world. Working across drawing, painting, and collage, her current large-format pencil crayon works focus on the unseen networks that sustain life. Her art reflects on our entanglement with nature and the potency of invisible systems — the subtle forces, rhythms, and relational fields that shape perception and coexistence.

A transformative moment in Larmuth’s practice emerged during the global lockdown of 2020. As the pandemic silenced human movement, spring unfolded vibrantly in the forests around Basel. Birdsong intensified while industrial noise receded, echoing reports from seismologists who recorded a measurable decline in the Earth’s vibrations. It was a rare interval in which the planet seemed to listen to itself. Immersed in this atmosphere of stillness and heightened awareness, Larmuth returned to drawing with renewed focus.

Working within the constraints of her apartment — using a roll of paper, pencil crayons, and limited materials — she embraced restriction as generative space. The resulting works occupy a territory between observation and invention: neither botanical illustration nor pure abstraction, but imagined ecologies. Her intricate plant forms evoke root systems, mycelial networks, acoustic and energetic fields — visual metaphors for the interconnected structures beneath visible surfaces.

Central to Larmuth’s practice is the concept of interconnection. Just as plants rely on complex underground exchanges, human communities depend on collaboration and shared purpose. Through meditative, layered compositions, she invites viewers to sense the invisible bonds that sustain both ecological and social life, expanding awareness of our place within living systems.