Stone Speaks With Artist, Meg Holgate
Painting as divine contemplation & the beauty of euphoric recall
Greetings friends who move mountains,
So wonderful to be back here with you all after a brief end of year hiatus. I appreciate your patience with me as I slowly come out of a much needed winter pause.
I am so overjoyed to share with you all my most recent dialogue with the wonderful artist, Meg Holgate. Meg is an artist who, “sees our natural landscape as universal perfection.” In our conversation, we dove into the complexities of her work exploring liminality, transcendence, and going beyond the voices of the mind. She intimately shares about her reception process as well as what she is in touch when working directly with the unknown.
After I completed my dialogue with Meg, I came across this passage in The Creative Act: “Carl Jung was obsessed with building a round tower to live, think, and create in. The shape was important because he saw “life in the round as something forever coming into being and passing on”. We are part of a constant, interconnected cycle of birth, death, and regeneration. Our bodies decay into the earth to bring forth new life, our energetic mind is returned to the universe to be repurposed. Art exists in this same cycle of death and rebirth.” Rubin (2023, p. 349)
As I gaze into Meg’s portals, I find myself in the in-between, not here, not there. She has managed so masterfully to convey the inconceivable, transience itself. I hope you enjoy this dialogue as much as I did & make sure to tune in for next month’s which will take place on February 24th.
Artist Statement
Each painting is a contemplation, an interpretation derived from the simple visual language of beauty in nature. As I deepen my relationship to the sublime, I am moved to explore the transient, the fleeting and the contingent.
Having relocated to the Pacific Northwest over 25 years ago, water and atmosphere have remained recurring themes for me. I look to capture a moment of stillness, choosing to paint with thin layers of color in various mediums, either on canvas or paper. Currently I am investigating lightfields to suggest a place of infinite potential while reducing my work to the simplest shapes in order to hold these morphic reflections.
Much of my work evolves from a euphoric recall; that singular moment when I have experienced beauty. It is from this recall that I create work. The experience of awe rewires my mind. These are the times when my breath has been taken away, when my vision has been altered. It is a moment when I recognise the interconnectedness with life and picking up a paint brush feels both exciting and daunting as I endeavor to express an almost intangible moment.
To learn more about Meg Holgate, please visit her website:
Her past exhibitions include:
Coastal Alchemy exhibition at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington (February 2014-2015)
Accreted Terrane exhibition at the Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner Washington (October 2014-January 2015)
A Precarious Edge exhibition at the Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner Washington ( February 26 - May 15, 2022)
A Precarious Edge at Schack Art Center, Everett, Washington (March 25 -June 3 2023)