Megan Lightell

Our relationship to the environment is complex and mysterious. Where we live speaks volumes about who we are and what we value. Living in one place for a period of time enables us to know it intimately, to feel the rhythms of the seasons. A place can become such a part of us that we take its images with us even when we leave.

Painting is a natural response to land for me. Raised in a rural community, I sought out the fast-paced life of New York but found it lacking in something I could not describe. When I returned to the country, I began to relate to the comfort, mystery, and silence embodied in the landscape. There is an eternity present in the land that was here before we were, and will continue in its cycles long after we are gone. There is almost a necessary spiritual connection that we have with the land that sustains our very lives, and in the increasingly urban lifestyles that many have adopted, that connection becomes faint and distant. My hope is that through painting I can show appreciation for my environment, in all its starkness and softness, warmth and loneliness.