Margot Lazar can remember the first time she knew she would become a painter. She was five years old. "When you are so young you cannot say that it is a decision or you are making plans for the future. It was just obvious, maybe predestination. I loved to study, but I became a painter. It was a priority."

Margot began her early career making portraits, which were often quite unconventional. In them are traces of many artists—the decorative strokes of Matisse, the distortion of El Greco, the bright, plain sexuality of David Hockney, the irony of German caricaturists like Otto Dix, and the close examination of Picasso—yet these elements combined in Margot's hands to become uniquely her own. As she describes: "When I was doing portraits I was trying to do it without thinking. I wanted to let my instinct drive the process. I kept repeating to myself, 'Don't try to understand or analyze what you are doing, just go ahead and you'll understand when the painting is done.' My pleasure was to meet people."

But portraiture was also an exhausting process and Margot found herself needing a break from the interaction with other people at that emotional level. So she began doing self-portraits. "I needed a pause to be able to continue," Margot says.

The turn of the new century brought about a shift for the artist, as it did for so many others. "As the century changed I realized that time was going faster than ever before. This feeling became sharper after the Twin Towers catastrophe. I decided to allow myself to paint representations of pleasure." It was at this point Margot turned to "immaterial" subjects like nudes, flowers, and angels. To some, she understands, these subjects may seem diminished and apolitical. But to her, they represent the essential elements of a "supportable life."

In contrast with the work of her husband, Claude, which features grand architectural facades or spacious, empty roadways, Margot's enigmatic paintings take as their subject interior spaces and their inhabitants. Rich, red tapestries or luxurious settees serve as the background to alluring, confident women. Like Cézanne's still lifes, these recent paintings have no clearly delineated border; the paint at their edges slowly drips or fades to raw canvas, suggesting a perpetual existence outside of space and time. Or, it seems as if these visions exist purely in memory or a dream.

The images are unabashedly sensual. The nudes provocative. The message of desire and desiring clear. That this would be at all taboo came as a surprise to Margot. "I thought they were 'forbidden' because they represented too light of a subject for painting, but I have realized that in fact they are considered 'forbidden' because they are controversial. Our society has trouble accepting sensuality."

Margot Lazar sees a simple message in them: "Be kind even with yourself."