Megan Kinney

Artist Statement

My multi-layered paintings incorporate a variety of textures that represent the dualities between joy and grief, two emotions that live in one house together. I grieve what is lost and what could have been, while simultaneously finding joy in what remains. While examining these two extreme emotions, I revisit stories passed down through family. Stories that were told and retold throughout my childhood. I embrace the embellishments that shaped these memories, honoring them as part of our shared past, even as I recognize that time alters them and they can never be fully recreated. We are all unreliable narrators when retelling a story. I can only remember the parts that I had truly paid attention to- the paintings are my memory of the story, and the true story is left in the past. My artwork goes from being representational to being completely obscure and abstract because I cannot recall every detail. Allowing nostalgia to take over when there is a block in memory, and let the paintings unfold as the new version of the stories.