Graphite lines & yellowed paper: a love story

a strange sense of containment
12x12" mixed media on canvas
© 2011 Megan Chapman

I've been busy in the studio this week and it has felt really good. I currently have sixteen new paintings under way for my upcoming exhibition, "Sometimes I love you and other stories." I have ten that are complete and some that are close. I have a lot more work to do and time feels like it is running out. I need to start thinking about my statement for this work and have the paintings documented for publicity purposes and my records.

I plan to work over the weekend and get a lot more done. I am very pleased with what is happening so far. These works are brilliantly white and clean, very spare and minimal. I have never been in love with pencil lines like I am in this moment. Then to top it off are the words, stray thoughts like poetry against the pages of discarded books, public letters to a distant lover embedded in the paint. To many this concept in my work will be brand new, to me it is a full circle moment. It was in the pages of discarded books that I found my voice in the B.F.A. program at the University of Oregon. Oh the stories I would spin! Some autobiographical and some completely fictitious. My scrawl across the pages, charcoal, pencil and white paint surrounding my words.

I am not returning to the past but perhaps I am righting my course. I have been working on that process for the last two years, starting in 2010 with the manual for living, the white series, maps of the night, the flashcards, and the letters never sent. These are all a part of one canon of work, perhaps my most intimate one.

I will always love rich layers of color, texture, space, and design based shapes. You can still find those works in my studio and in galleries but I will also love my monochromatic worlds that speak from my heart and that remind me of my story. I hope these new works will remind you of your story too.

Here is a scratchy outline of a possible statement...

Sometimes I love you and other stories...
September 2011
Vault Gallery
Fayetteville Underground

This series of paintings explores the kind of love that catches you unexpectedly. You always knew it was there somewhere on the planet but it was for other people. At the same time that this love sounds special or unique it is also ordinary and known. It is new and old at the same time. Never simple or easy it somehow fills the gaps within, making the core of the person it touches stronger. A rebuilding takes place after years of personal neglect.

Sometimes I love you and other stories represents the absence of fear and the challenges to our beliefs about ourselves, the world outside, and finding another soul that you can sometimes love. How do you paint a questioning love? How do you paint passion? The first moment you touch or the first argument? How do you paint the freedom and inspiration found in another?

I have no idea....but I can't wait to dive in and try.