Margaret Garcia studied at California State University, Northridge, Los Angeles City College, and the University of Southern California where she received an M.F.A. In her paintings and mural projects, she attempts to define herself in relation to her community, and vice-versa. "I define Chicano art by making it," she has said, and indeed for Garcia being part of a community is part of being human. Oil paintings such as El Mar (2000) and Janine at 39, with Twins, (2000) evoke Gaugin's Tahiti, but their saturated, wildly expressive palette and flat compositional space are firmly rooted in the tradition of Mexican folk art. Her works are in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Laguna Art Museum. She has received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award in Visual Arts (1993), a Feitelson Lundeberg Award, and a Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery Brody Fellowship in Visual Arts (1989).