Margaret Sibley

Margaret B. "Peggy" Sibley (c. 1906 – May 10, 1987) was an American painter and arts organizer whose work and advocacy helped establish a modern art community in and around Healdsburg, California, in the mid-20th century. Active in Paradise, Red Bluff, Healdsburg and Santa Rosa, she exhibited widely in Northern California and was a founding figure of the Healdsburg Arts group and the Balcony Gallery Co-operative.

Early life and education Sibley was born in South Africa and raised in New York State. She did not begin to paint seriously until after her children were in school.

While living in Paradise she designed and built two houses, worked as an interior decorator, and was active as a gardener, describing herself as a self-taught architect and landscape designer. Seeking other artists, she placed an advertisement in the local newspaper inviting people interested in forming an art club to contact her. Meetings held in the Sibley living room led to the creation of Healdsburg Arts, an organization which later credited its beginnings to her initiative. As chair of the co-operative, she helped establish a venue where regional artists could exhibit paintings, sculpture and ceramics for sale or rent. The gallery used a jury system, kept shows changing, and offered low-cost rentals intended to make original art accessible to local residents. In 1965 the co-operative closed its Healdsburg premises and merged into the Redwood Empire Art Center in Santa Rosa.

A 1966 profile described Sibley as a "serious modern painter" and noted that she had already held one-woman shows at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Lucien Labaudt Gallery and the Quill Gallery in San Francisco, as well as exhibiting in programs such as the Northern California Annual and the Jack London Square Art Festival.

Sibley continued to exhibit widely in regional banks, wineries and civic buildings. In 1971 she showed work at the First National Bank in Cloverdale, The latter article noted that she had held one-woman shows at the Palace of the Legion of Honor and the San Francisco Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), and that she had been exhibiting for some 20 years. The article reported that she had been "plying her trade" for 25 years and had shown work in many notable exhibitions. She often quoted Carl Jung's remark that "crystals and flowers are God's thoughts" and said that such ideas informed her work. and in a 1967 interview remarked that "it is important to be creative—much more important than waging war", linking her art-making to wider hopes for peace.

Legacy By the late 1980s Healdsburg Arts mounted a posthumous exhibition of Sibley's paintings and publicly stated that the organization "owed its beginnings" to her early efforts.