Margaret Ross Tolbert has always investigated the lenses and points of view, especially linguisticand social, that create different realities. She earned her BFA and MFA in painting at the University of Florida, and soon after had her firstunderwater explorations in the springs heartland of the Floridan aquifer. She discovered that incertain ideal circumstances, the lens of water is not only a metaphorical construct but an actualphysical space we can enter. When we enter this space, we are transformed. Her work has sincebeen about communicating the experience of immersion through painting and installation,writing and film.Since the 1980s, Tolbert’s springs paintings have featured in exhibits and collections in the US,Europe and Turkey. In 2010 the book AQUIFERious, with art and science combining as aguidebook to springs and the Floridan aquifer, and the urgent need for preservation, wasreleased. It received a gold and silver medal in the Florida Book Awards, and the accompanyingAQUIFERious exhibit and film was shown in New Orleans, the University of Virginia and innumerous museums and art centers in Florida through 2019. Tolbert was a producer of LostSprings (2017), a plea for restoration of a historic river and springs with her art as a startingpoint, with a premiere exhibition at the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art. Public artinstallations include the Orlando Springs installation (2011) at Orlando International Airport, andConnected Worlds of forest and springs at the Austin Cary Memorial Forest (2015) inGainesville, FL. Tolbert has had several exhibits in the Art and Embassies program in Turkey,and her commissioned 18 ft diptych Ulupinar/Great Spring was recently installed in the newUnited States embassy in Ankara, Turkey. She is based in Gainesville, FL.