ARTIST STATEMENT
I’m a still-life painter living with C-PTSD. As a healing practice, I pull together weird little clusters of objects that I’m thinking about, creating cross-sections of the everyday and intense fragments of personal narrative. I understand attachment through layered objects and textures that simultaneously hold sentimentality, vivid memory, myth and history, spontaneity, and pain.
Like many of us, my queerness was identified, rejected and suppressed before I recognized it. My survival depended on queer expression through nonverbal language. Through paint, I reconstruct a home in which my identity is welcome as I meditate on the impact of trauma on the ebb and flow of my relationships. I build cryptic still lives, secret little love notes, nestled into chromatic elements that hold the naturality, joy, tenderness, simplicity, and heartache of authentic love.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Meg Wolensky (they/she) is a queer artist who performs oil painting as a healing practice to unveil hidden truths and moments of joy in trauma recovery. In the aftermath, Wolensky translates colorful fragments of experiences, memories, and dreams into a cohesive whole. This evolving investigation takes physical form in paintings, drawings, photography and collages that layer cross-sections of personal narrative.
Originally from West Chester, Pennsylvania, Meg now resides in Philadelphia and serves as the Director of Continuing Education at Moore College of Art & Design. Meg is passionate about designing accessible arts experiences and work-readiness opportunities for marginalized professional artists and youth in need. Outside of creating and working, she lends professional curatorial, grant-writing, art handling, and arts nonprofit administration strategy services to other queer artists, students, organizations and initiatives. Meg has also worked as an art educator for creative students experiencing incarceration and re-entry. She continues to advocate for arts access for those impacted by the criminal justice system.
© Meg Wolensky