artist simply Interviews Megan Perkins

egan Perkins is an artist, teacher, and native of the Pacific Northwest. Her art education consists of art history and studio classes taken during and after her time spent at Gonzaga University as well as workshops and private study with other professional artists post-graduation. She lives in Deer Park, WA and works primarily in watercolor with a love of color and expressive line. She has exhibited in many venues in the Spokane region including the Chase Gallery, Terrain, Jundt Art Museum and more. She is on the board of Art Salvage, a local creative reuse shop, a member at Pottery Place Plus, and teaches at the Spokane Art School and Corbin Art Center. She is most well known for her Artist’s Eye on Spokane series, which was started during a year-long project of painting at a new location in Spokane every week for 52 weeks. This project culminated in a locally produced book by the same name. Her paintings of the Spokane area are featured in a monthly column in the Spokane Coeur D’Alene Living magazine.

See Megan's art work at artist simply website.

Megan Perkins’s Artist Statement

I am a recorder by nature. Keeping sketchbooks and drawing my daily life has been a habit for years. Drawing, rather than simply snapping a photograph, is a way for me to inhabit my life rather than letting it get away from me. It leaves a physical record that helps me pay attention to what I’m doing in and with my life and takes time, leaving me open to experiences and to connecting to strangers when I draw or paint on location both at home and when traveling. To me, drawing and painting is a road to experiencing and truly seeing a place, object or person. Drawing is a way to absorb the beauty of the world around me, but also, a way to understand my surroundings, how an object is put together, why a building or configuration of light and shadow caught my eye. Art is a path into deeper understanding and communion with both places and people. I make colorful watercolor paintings and drawings as a way of holding up the quotidian of life as worthy of attention and worth sharing with others. It reminds people to slow down and realize the richness of their own lives, available if they simply pay attention. Being in this sort of practice puts me in the mindset of gratitude and because of this practice of paying attention to the world, of looking for beauty in the ordinary, I’m attuned for it and that is how I want to live my life.