Artist Statement

I paint the female body because it’s my body—my story, my protector—and how I connect to the world. Every curve and gesture reflects the histories we carry, the stories of love, loss, and resilience that shape us. Through the body, I explore the complexity of relationships, both with ourselves and others. My work is figurative, but it extends beyond form; it touches the emotional landscapes of connection, duality, and transformation.

Tension is the heartbeat of my art—a push and pull between opposites. I am drawn to how two things can exist at once in one space or one body: beauty and grotesqueness, strength and vulnerability, freedom and confinement. This exploration of duality is deeply personal. My life has been woven from this tension. I came out as queer well into my thirties, leaving behind a marriage and the life I’d built to embrace my truth. This journey of self-discovery brought liberation, but also fear and sacrifice. In my paintings, the women embody this experience; they are strong yet fragile, free yet bound by their histories.

In creating these figures, I let them hold all their contradictions. They are not idealized; they are raw, flawed, exaggerated. They bloom in the gray areas where beauty and ugliness meet, where tenderness and violence intertwine. I embrace the messiness of human experience—life is complicated, and so is love. I want my work to reflect that.

Gesture and form are my means of communication. A turned head, a bent finger—these details reveal stories of love, pain, resilience, and the weight of expectation. These women represent my own journey, but also universal truths about navigating relationships and selfhood. They are vessels of both personal and shared experiences, embodying the moments of both confinement and release that define us.

Ultimately, my work is about connection: how we connect with ourselves, with those we love, and with the world. The female form, in all its complexity, becomes the medium through which I explore these ideas. Through the body, we experience life; through the body, I tell my story.

I paint to understand myself and reach out to others. The body serves as a vessel for universal emotions and experiences. My work reflects life in its contradictions, embracing the forms we adopt to survive and the strength required to reveal our true selves.

Bio

Megan holds a Bachelor's of Fine Art from ASU and is currently working from the Megaphone Studios in Phoenix, Arizona where she delves into the realm of the subconscious, infusing her works with elements of compassion, introspection, and beauty. She holds a Master's Degree in education and taught art professionally for 8 years. Megan's ambitions continue to evolve as she sets her sights on pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in the fall of 2025.