Ingrid Magidson knew how frustrating making art could be. She once witnessed her father, dismayed by his own creative efforts, burn all the art he had made. So Magidson suppressed her artistic impulse. “So much emotion and turmoil—I didn’t want to go there,” she says.
In 2005, about to turn forty, Magidson finally let loose, and those fears came true. Her art—a complex layering of fabric, sheet music, and occasionally her children’s toys—was highly experimental, and delving into the unknown brought her a turmoil of her own.

“I was inspired by artists who tried to change the course of history—Beethoven, Damien Hirst, people with no fear,” she says. “They go out on limbs. They go into that darkness to create.”
Magidson’s reward was a unique form of art that references eighteenth-century European music, fashion, and the human figure. Her reputation is growing: after showing at Art Basel Miami recently, Magidson was signed by Unix Gallery for a show next spring in New York. A one-person exhibition opens Aug. 3 at Aspen’s Forré Fine Art. The opening is accompanied by a book, Madness of the Muses, which Magidson created with her husband, art dealer Jay Magidson.

Her work has become more complex, but the agony of creation has vanished as Magidson struck a balance between family, spirit, and art.

“Now I have unending beauty and happiness,” she says.