Megan Merchant

ARTIST STATEMENT

Many of these mixed media images were created during quarantine. My youngest son has a myriad of health issues, so as soon as the first cases of Covid came to the US, we locked down and operated as if life existed almost exclusively behind our walls. Despite being a prolific poet, everything grew silent. It was unexpected, given that I have written through grief before—my son’s speech loss, my mother’s misdiagnosed brain tumor and death, numerous miscarriages—but once the external world was stripped for me to pull from, my internal world quieted. I no longer had the sparks of overheard conversations, images, and sounds to pull as threads. So, I had to start a new relationship with image. I ventured into drawing for the first time in my adult life. Then, I tried painting. I fell in love with the movement, the physicality and somatic experience of creating art that seemed to bypass my brain and come directly from my being. I went even further and enrolled in collage classes in New York, via Zoom, and fell even more in awe of the possibilities that exist. I was able to give my creativity an outlet to flood. Somehow, engaging with visual art has made this last year tolerable.  

Regarding process, I approach each piece with a sense of wild curiosity, adding various elements like tissue paper, sandpaper, leaves, tea, and ink-stained flowers to see what might happen. I approach it much like I do a poem—with a sense of excitement and wonder, hoping that I will have created something beautiful. 

For more work, visit my website at https://meganmerchant.wixsite.com/poet.