“…inspired by well
chosen colors and
perfectly placed
lines.”


“…inspired by
well chosen
colors and
perfectly
placed
lines.”

About Megan


Megan Elizabeth makes lovely, thoughtful things in the realm of illustration, painting, collage and installation.

 She was raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and completed a BFA in Studio Arts with an emphasis in Art Education at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. She has taught Art to people of all ages in the U.S., Europe, and Canada. She and her husband currently live in Wichita, Kansas with their three children. She personally enjoys four very distinct seasons in which to grow sunflowers and explore creeks (summer), jump in leaf piles and read by the fire (autumn), make snow people and explore the same frozen creeks (winter), and delight in blooming redbud trees and wild thunderstorms (spring). But her favorite thing to do is to bring a sketchbook out on a walk in nature.

Say hello at meg@megan-gilbert.com

What I do


“Beauty is truth and truth is beauty,” the poet John Keats once said. I love the challenge of being a part of creating something beautiful. I am inspired by well chosen colors, perfectly placed lines, and simplified images that represent more complex relationships, realities, and stories – there is something honest about them that I feel drawn to. Such honesty gathers strength from the pure elements of design: line, color, composition and form.

I work in traditional media and forms- oils, inks, collage, watercolor, printmaking, dark room photography, clay, installation, murals, etc., – and enjoy taking the risks and making the commitments that they demand, at micro and macro scales. They have formed my artistic imagination indelibly. Yet I also work digitally, and enjoy the captured ‘traces’ of the process that show the dance of adjustments toward the birth of the “final” image. In digital work, all of the “mistakes” along the way are part of the drawing, a palimpsest of the story in a somehow less ethereal way. In all art, though, as Andy Goldsworthy once said, “what is beneath, effects the surface.”

How I do


The most important (and often, most difficult) thing is to simply begin a work. The next most difficult thing is to allow it to be something other than I had first imagined it to be. It is exciting to observe it as it reveals itself, but also can be frustrating and require great patience and a special kind of listening. To let it be created. To hear its voice. To follow its guidance with each element…until it’s done. That is the final most difficult thing. It is, in a way, maternal. This is how we keep working and reveal something honest, something truly unique, which arrives from shared labor. As the time-lapse replay in digital media reveals, it is through the “mistakes” and adjustments that the work can grow, flourish and present itself.

As a mother of three young children, I try to sit down and draw/watercolor/sculpt alongside my children. Their uninhibited imagination and pure joy in making things inspires me. I have to constantly remind myself: just because they are quiet and occupied at the table, doesn’t mean that I should try to squeeze in that next household task (because they never cease!). It means that I should sit down and join them. When it comes to dead-line assignments, though, I typically get most of my creative work done once the children are in bed. That is when I can fully enter my “Walden Pond” of timelessness.

Experience


I am an artist and an educator. I have taught, exhibited and curated internationally: from teaching darkroom and digital photography in Greece, to leading an art history course on the Bauhaus through Germany; from adult illustration workshops in California to elementary school district art exhibitions in BC, Canada.

Saint Katherine College

Adjunct professor of Art
San Marcos, California

Lecturing Artist on B&W
Photography and Digital Imaging

at Hellenic International Studies In the Arts
Paros, Greece

Art History Assistant/Guest lecturer

Art Department Study Abroad Program, Euroterm
Point Loma Nazarene University
Paris, France (etc)

Artist in Residence

West-Mont Montessori School,
Victoria, BC

Vancouver Island School of Art

Guest Teacher
Victoria, BC
Lectures and workshops on “Narrative Illustration” & “Illustration & Contemporary Drawing”

Publications


I love the challenge of working on a children’s book. A lot of planning goes into how it will all tie cohesively together: will it be unified by its minimal color pallet or by how diverse each page is from the next? Does the illustration successfully tell something more than the text has alluded to? I enjoy the creative brainstorming that happens when working with a publisher and being part of a project’s team.

“Mother’s Prayer”

Published by Ancient Faith Press, 2020

“Beautiful Christmas”

Published by Ancient Faith Press, 2019

“Beautiful Things”

Published by Ancient Faith Press, 2018

“When God Made You”

Published by Ancient Faith Press, 2015

“A Child’s Guide to The Divine Liturgy”

Published by Ancient Faith Press, 2014

Awards

NATIONAL OPERA ASSOCIATION, 2010,
set design for The Magic Flute

Exhibitions

• 2020 Artist/Mother: Painting at Night, juried exhibition  

• 2019 The Fine Art of Children’s Literature Gallery Show, SCBWI, Kansas City, MO 

  • 2012 Stay: Reinterpreting the Token, Helmuth Projects, San Diego, California
  • 2012 Curator of student’s show: West-Mont Montessori School, Metchosin, BC
  • 2012 Invisible Cities, Habit, Victoria, BC
  • 2011 Faculty Exhibition, Vancouver Island School of Art, Canada
  • 2011 Dynamis, an installation at the Ministry of Casual Living, Victoria, BC
  • 2011 Curator of student’s show: Hellenic International Studies in the Arts, Paros, Greece
  • 2011 SARAF, an installation in the Holland Tunnel, Hellenic International Studies in the Arts, Paros, Greece
  • 2011 Look, Regional Exhibition, Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria, BC, Canada
  • 2011 Curator of student’s show: Opportunities, West-Mont Montessori, Victoria, BC, Canada
  • 2010 Curator of the Photography show:The Substance of Memory, Espace Jean Monnet, Paris, France

 

  • 2009 Home to the Heart, People’s Co-Op, San Diego, CA
  • 2009 Homework Show, Point of Departure, San Diego, CA
  • 2009 The Ecstasy of Speed, Interdisciplinary Conference, San Diego State University, CA
  • 2009 Reconstruction, Linwood House, San Diego, CA
  • 2008 Centro Cultural de la Raza, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA
  • 2006 Highlights 2006, Keller Gallery, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, CA
  • 2006 One Day, Portfolio Exhibition, Keller Gallery, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, CA
  • 2005 Beyond Borders, Hellenic International Studies in the Arts, Paros, Greece
  • 2002 A Study in Oils, Starbucks, Phoenix, AZ
  • 2002 Portfolio Exhibition, Shadow Mountain, Phoenix, AZ

Let’s Work

I’m always interested in new and exciting projects, so do get in touch.