“The capacity to be alone facilitated learning, thinking, innovation, coming to terms with change, and the maintenance of contact with the inner world of the imagination.” – from Solitude A Return to the Self by Anthony Storr I have been busy in my studio over the past 9 months. As I wrote here back in […]
Living With
In 2022, roughly 1.9 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States. All of us are touched by it in some form. Thanks to remarkable medical advances in treatment, many people live with cancer for a longer time than ever before, surrounded by people who love them, who help care for them […]
2022 in Books: Deep and Delicious
I love “books of the year” lists, and eagerly peruse them all – from the New York Times to Barack Obama to Goodreads to the national book awards, then heading straight over to Jefferson County Library catalog to reserve the picks that catch my fancy. (I am rather incorrigible, currently my requested hold list is […]
Views From the Cancer Hotel
Recently, I spent two weeks in Seattle, with my sweet husband Joe who underwent radiation for advanced cutaneous t-cell lymphoma. We stayed at South Lake Union House (aka “the Cancer Hotel”), patient lodging for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and shuttled to UW Medical Center every day. What does an artist do in this situation? Away […]
Some Mornings: The Juncture of Painti...
“Some Mornings” a solo exhibit of my most recent paintings, inspired from poems by Linda M. Robertson, opens at Northwind Art Grover Gallery in Port Townsend on March 17, and runs through May 30. You’ve seen evidence of this new direction over the past year. In fact, in December 2020, I talked about the first […]
Books & Music: Studio Favorites
The end of the year is traditional for lists….and I am jumping into it with the books and soundtracks that have fed my practice. Maybe they will inspire you too! TOP 5 BOOKS The latest edition to my art bookshelf is “Richard Diebenkorn, Beginnings, 1942-1955,” Scott A Shields, PhD., Pomegranate Press, 2017. I picked it […]
Let now win.
“It is a relief to let go of the need to know. In fact, it is better not to think we need to answer, and to allow authentic responses to arise on their own.” Narayan Helen Liebenson, The Magnanimous Heart This quote (from Narayan Helen Liebenson, The Magnanimous Heart) was my guiding advice as I […]
Look back, look forward
Applying for exhibits, residencies, grants, and opportunities is part of the journey of a working artist. The process can be discouraging to say the least. I’ve heard it said many times: never give up on applying regardless of the chance of success. You never know where your work will land, and every opportunity is so […]
Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?
You would think that with months of social isolation, and now the cold of the season driving us even further indoors, with quietness abounding (and resounding) – that the itch for activity would be hollering to be scratched. That’s not happening for me. It seems that perhaps, over these months, the capacity for quietness has […]
Worlds in Worlds
Literature and art making are intertwined for me, and yet, when you look at my work, that may not be immediately obvious. My paintings reflect the visible world – through hand, eye, craft and energy – emerging as my visual voice. I don’t directly take words and set to making a painting about them. So, […]
Sketching towards abstraction
“I had to create an equivalent to what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.” Georgia O’Keeffe I continue to paint on the themes of trees, waterways and fruit, using sketches as process for visual distillation. My daughter commented to me that she’s noticed over the past 4 years that […]
Inspiration and Collaboration
UPDATE 10/17/19: Download the short summary from this event here:https://artist.megkaczyk.com/wp-content/uploads/Intersection-of-Art-and-Environment-Brief-final-7-19.pdf From my feelings of wondering and helplessness about our environmental crisis, I started thinking about how artists could help. There are many small (but mighty) non-profits doing good work in our region, and beyond. Obviously donating to, and volunteering for those organizations helps in a […]
Beyond Art and Fear
“Vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue.” ~ from “Art & Fear/Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking” by David Bayles & Ted Orland “Art & Fear” is a small classic book published in 1993 (which you can download for free here), but new […]
New Neural Pathways
I am still embarked on my madrona series, finding continuing inspiration in the trees’ presence and beauty. Meanwhile, a synergy of other influences has beckoned. First of all, the medium: a few years ago, a neighbor gifted me with awesome Gamblin oils — she worked there and got cast off tubes as a bonus — […]
The Roadstead Project
A few months ago, I joined a new collaborative group emanating from the fecund literary community in Port Townsend. We are The Roadstead Project. We are 20 poets and visual artists, coming together to see where our creative exchange and intermingling of pictures and words will go. So far I have worked with a […]
Loose strokes
Anyone who knows me has seen my sketchbooks, volumes of them at this point, in which I capture the gesture of a place. Most recently working with thin marker and watercolor, I especially like the motion of an urban environment, and I use color and line to record often very busy scenes. Here in Port […]
Fun with function: Puget Sound Birds ...
Being part of Gallery 9 has brought some interesting opportunities for commissions. I have painted red winged black birds for an anniversary, nuthatches for a birthday, and most recently, a couple who lives on Discovery Bay came to me with a very fun request. They had new cork floors installed, and made use of the overage […]
There’s something about a boat
I am not a nautical type. Though I grew up near Lake Huron, walking the boat docks of Grosse Pointe City Park in the muggy midwest summers, and even heading out on a sunfish now and then, that’s about extent of my marine experience. My limited boating expertise is with canoes and kayaks — feeling more kinship […]
Wonderment Driven by Boundless Expans...
“Making art is a process of wonderment driven by boundless expansion.” Guillame Wolf I painted for this February show from early December until 3 days before the opening event, making enough art to fill the Stonehenge gallery walls in a satisfying profusion. After all these years of art making, I still step back with a […]
Discovering Persimmons
I was introduced to this fruit this holiday season — and was enchanted by their beauty. At a neighborhood Christmas Eve brunch, some California visitors arrived with a brimming basket of the small merry globes to share, picked from their yard. I always thought this fruit was only edible when mushy-ripe, which never sounded appealing… […]
Anatomy of a Painting
I am always fascinated to see artist work in process, glimpses into studios, sketches and stages along the way, giving so much insight about the final result that hangs before me. My summer trip to London included a trip to the Matisse exhibit at the Tate (now showing at MoMA in NYC) and it was a […]
Wet chickens
Here’s some new work that won’t see the gallery pages, since they were commissioned and have flown the coop already. The paint was practically wet when they left! I like commissions, and take the requests as an opportunity to paint a small series — at least two and sometimes more — giving the patron a […]
Travel as inspiration
At its best, vacation is time away from routine, with wide open spaces of receiving, listening, and leaning toward new experience. It is a wonderful avenue of inspiration. With that intention, a predominant theme of my recent UK visit was Art. (other themes were family, history and gin-&-tonics). Visits to the richness of UK museums […]
Taking it to color
Picking Tomatoes Now I have taken the sketches from the previous post, and brought out my loaner antique hand press to bring line into color and form, through the medium of the monoprint. Printmaking is like Christmas… feeling the anticipation from painting on plexiglass/acrylic plates, soaking paper, waiting for hours or overnight… to bring the plate […]
Feeling the harvest
The mornings are cool, the nights crisp, the days sunny and breezy and dry. Ah, August, with your prescient glimpse of autumn. I took the opportunity of the still-light evening to sketch my friend Christine in her garden. Who knows what the sketches will seed? Last time I drew Christine, it was winter and […]
Vicarious Travels
I’ve just finished up 5 new paintings commissioned by a couple of motorcycle travelers… they toured cities and roads around Europe and wanted a wall of paintings to remember their adventures by. It was fun to “put my Europe on” and bring my style to the photos they sent me. My previous city-life paintings are […]
Playing with New Tools
I had a lot of fun playing with Autodesk Sketchbook for an Opus Creative project — into the wee hours this last week. Deadlines aren’t so bad when there is drawing involved! Sketchbook combines aspects of Photoshop, Illustrator and has a really intuitive interface. For my part, I was supplying a sketch for part of […]
Enjoying Artistic License
My recent visit to New Mexico was the tail end of a 10-day road trip that went through the Canyonlands of Utah. Santa Fe got added to the itinerary because of a lovely exhibit currently showing at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. I just had to see it. “The Faraway” features familiar O’Keeffe paintings of Northern […]
Daylily Thoughts of Blooming
Just finished this new painting as a commission for dear Uncle Micky, a prolific and enthusiastic creator himself. He wanted a bright spot of daylily on his wall, and who can blame him? Spring rainy days need a little help from art to remind us of the spectrum of blooming ahead. I painted this piece […]
Artists Among Us on a Sunny Weekend
This weekend (May 12-13) you can see some new bird paintings at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral’s 12th annual “Artists Among Us” show. Allan Oliver, former owner of Onda Gallery, helped to expand this year’s artist roster by reaching out to those of us who had showed in his gallery in the past. Trinity is a lovely […]
Back to the Garden
New year. Renewed energy. Picking up the threads of creation. After I pack away the Christmas lovely clutter, my studio can once again become making-in-motion. I have three areas of activity to return to (good thing I have lots of tables!). One is what I am calling “Following the Thread” series, with collage, watercolor and […]
Studio Alive
Just getting the studio ready for the open showing was invigorating — we cleaned and organized and cleared and made loveliness out of my ordinary creative chaos. And then having lively celebration and sharing as many people showed up, all throughout the day, was great fun. I loved telling the stories behind the pieces that […]
New explorations
If you come to my studio open house (or visit another time!) you will see my current work in progress, which is a little different than what you see on the gallery pages here. I am using old family documents to provide the ground for watercolor and gouache paintings. Subject matter, so far, is from […]
Quick studies
If you come to my studio open house in a couple of weeks, you will see a flock of these small postcard watercolors (available for purchase). They are pure pleasure to create: I sketch in pencil quickly from those darling little mushroom birds I have perched all over my studio. Then I use liquid frisket […]
Mushroom Birds
Obviously birds are hard, if not impossible, to sketch “on the fly”. My bird paintings as shown elsewhere on this site, are drawn from photos, mostly from used scientific and bird watching books I got at Powells. These small postcard paintings, however, were drawn from “real” fake birds…. ie the delicate birds (often with clips) […]