Megan Williamson (she/her) is a Chicago-based painter. Whose work has been shown in Italy, Ireland, Canada, and in dozens of venues across the United States.

Her artwork has been featured in the New Art Examiner, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, American Artist, Art New England and more. Her 100 Zoom portraits project interview was broadcast on Scripts Media and another on WTTW. Her work can be found at the Swope Art Museum, The Midwest Museum of American Art, Illinois Museum and in private and corporate collections throughout the country.

Ms. Williamson was awarded an Innovation Fellowship with the National Science Foundation in 2014 and a DCASE Grant in 2015. She has received 3 CAAP grants from the City of Chicago.

She has taught at The International School of Art in Umbria and Project Perugia in Italy. She has been a visiting artist in institutions across the United States including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Michigan, Mt Gretna School of Art, Columbia College, University of Dallas, and more. Williamson attended the New York Studio School, Knox College, Yale’s Norfolk Program, and Queens College Landscape Painting Program.

Artist Statement

I know a few things for certain, one is that I am a painter. It has been one of the constants in my life and being able to continue to be one has played a part in every major decision I have made.

I received my BA in art at Knox College, a small liberal arts college in Illinois. When my professor sent me to study with his teacher at Queens College for a two-month intensive in landscape painting, I was deeply engaged but struggled the whole time. In a group crit when one of my paintings was singled out as “a knowledgeable failure”, I could have been discouraged, but I actually thought it meant I was heading in the right direction. I was. As a visiting or teaching artist I often tell that story. And when my students invariably run up against it, I point to myself, say “knowledgeable failure”, and tell them to keep on. I have learned that painting isn’t about talent, it’s about the search. It’s not just about making images, it has been a vehicle for me for self-awareness, to try to bring some measure of beauty into the world, and to connect with the ineffable.

It takes a long time to learn how to paint. I studied with a number of amazing teachers who were artists in their own right. The most important of them to me was Nick Carone. He was my mentor at the New York Studio School and years later hired me to teach at his school in Italy. He studied with Hans Hoffman. He was an Abstract Expressionist who was a good friend and neighbor to both Pollock and Rothko. He once showed me the spot in Rome where he was standing when Matta introduced him to Picasso! He kept the lineage of the Grand Tradition of Painting alive and carried it forward through his own work and teaching. I also hope to do the same with my viewers and students.

Despite having studied with this abstract artist, I have always been a perceptual painter. Over the decades I have pushed my observational paintings to answer my unexpected questions. Is there a compelling view at an industrial canal, can I find an abstracted structure underpinning an idyllic Italian garden? In the studio can I go beyond putting one color next to another to create space and light? What about using the exponential complexity of painting patterns next to pattern?

Picasso said “Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things” This gave me courage when eight years ago I opened a door of my own and quite suddenly began painting figures and scenes out of my imagination. There was no going back and now it is all I want to do. While challenging, it has also been a joy to find that in my fifties I began painting in a whole new, visual world. Decades of working from life, has given me the ability to paint what I imagine. This is not to say that there isn’t work, rework and challenges, but I have been amazed to discover that if I “look up” and concentrate I can “see” the figures, animals, light, and places I want to paint. Swimming and diving people, night scenes, imagined forests, and for the last five years, behind the scene at the circus, have been my subjects. What once was an unexpected change in my work, now feels like home.