An image appears in my mind of a finished painting. I paint it.
And at that point my process of painting begins.

Having grown up in the interior of British Columbia, in a small railway and logging town on the Trans-Canada Highway near an area with the highest incidence of avalanches, with a dam and a ski hill, and attempts at small farms, I am concerned with the intersection of areas of human settlement and the environment. I am interested in the man made controls humans have had upon the landscape in the forms of clear-cuts, avalanche-forecasting and control, damming and periodic flooding.

The process of evolution inspires me. A chain of information must be created before any evolutionary process can occur. This information is passed on and transmitted in order to create something new. During this transference, the information becomes mutated as certain traits are either lost or picked up along the way. These mutations sequentially lead to alternate manifestations of the ideas and concepts that preceded them.

Painting en plein air and roaming parts of Chicago that tourists don't see, this urban landscape painter is inexplicably drawn to alleys, industrial sites, recycle centers, and the constant regeneration of "The City That Works." There is a never-ending energy in the scenes of smashed cars being lifted by giant "grapples" and loaded onto a conveyor belt to be recycled. A critic wrote of "her fauvist use of color" and one can see that in these paintings of twisted steel and detritus.

Hildebrandt, Megan, and Megan Voeller. “Thinking with Art, or What Happens When a Critic Sees You Lose Your Hair.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 3, no. 2.

How Many Days Until Something Is a Habit is an ongoing document that chronicles pregnancy and new motherhood. The intensive amount of energy I give my child is reflected in the visible labor of the hand-cut paper. The cutout pieces pile up in my studio as my child grows. I never run out of paper.

My current series of paintings evoke an emotive, internal and critical site. Comprised of shifting elements and surfaces, the images strip away and reject the uplifting grandeur that once was a foundation of the Romantic landscape genre. Romanticism's portrayal of nature and the infinite serve as backdrop to my images. The depiction of a dark, desolate and unstable arctic clime pushes the viewer to acknowledge a deflating of the sublime and lack of redemptive Romantic characteristics in the images.

My recent work in painting focuses on urban landscape. I am particularly interested in the beauty found within what is often perceived as the ugly side of our urban existence. I am drawn to the industrial corridors and abandoned neighborhoods at the "back" of the city where man-made structures and objects have been neglected, and nature, garbage, and graffiti now thrive. I see these areas as rich archaeological sites where shifts in mainstream culture have created marked changes in the environment, and where seemingly opposite ecosystems now intersect.

black and white = visual uniformity = a sense of nostalgia. divided by no thematic limit.

divided by making connections from a wide swath of possible meanings. singularly and sequentially these paintings aim to create loose stories that do not teach or at times even feel conclusive, but rather remain "middles" of an event. like life, they are excerpts within the continuum, reaching for definition.

What at one time was painful can become beautiful; what at one time seemed perfect can become faded and wooden. We all see the past through the eyes of our present minds, and chameleon-like, memory transforms itself with our personal evolution.

It's hard to say why we remember certain things, or what makes a particular moment in time worth remembering. That time that you fell in the water canoeing, or the place where you grew up. The perfume bottle that was above your grandmother's toilet, or the concert where that one guy totally rocked. We collect experiences through our actions, as well as objects and images to remind us of them: photographs, trinkets, souvenirs that serve as a physical links between the present and the past.