megan wolfkill

I’m a painter based in Cincinnati, OH whose practice contends with the futility associated with capturing the passing moment within the surface of a canvas in effort to more deeply know oneself. This primary concern is framed by queerness, the inevitable change of bodily function, and the desire to experience intimacy. My paintings address these ideas through softness, staining, color, abstraction, and repeated form and line.

Staining integrates surface, gesture, and material into one inseparable unit while communicating a desire to make permanent, to mark, and to leave evidence of oneself. I use unprimed canvas which allows paint to seep into and stain the fibers that make up the surface. This creates a “lived-in” feeling that is reminiscent of your grandmother’s couch or a favorite pair of jeans. Quiet comfort contrasts the physicality of chalk and oil pastel which sits on the surface, exaggerating the surface’s tactility and the drawn mark’s directionality. The play between sunken pigment and shallow dry material emphasizes spatial illusion, complex figure-ground relationships, and allusive imagery.

My interest in materiality and impulse to mark space and time on a two-dimensional connect to British scholar Sara Ahmed’s theory of queer disorientation. According to Ahmed, the inability to orient oneself in a heteronormative world is a condition of queerness. I use my paintings to both make reference to myself and my body as I am now, but also to find, uncover, and seek versions of myself that I don’t yet know. The action of marking a surface with a gesture of my own invention roots me in the physical world while allowing for imagination and inquiry of alternates: alternate worlds, alternate ideas, alternate experiences, and alternate identities.