S.I.R.
Manifest Scholar in Residence
2024/2025
Megan Wolfkill
Megan Wolfkill (b.1996) received her Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in Painting + Drawing at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville in May of 2024. Megan’s thesis exhibition titled Back-to-Back was presented at the Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture in March 2024. She was a finalist in the 2024 Miami University Yeck Young Painters Competition, and recently presented at SECAC in Richmond, VA. Megan has had artwork in numerous juried exhibitions in Tennessee, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, and has had two-person shows with artists such as Anthony Huang and Carole Quinn. Her work was featured in Manifest's 18th Annual Master Pieces exhibition in 2024. Her first solo exhibition, Durational and Momentary, took place at Gallery 1010 in Knoxville, TN in 2022.
Megan has attended residencies at Penland School of Craft in 2019 and 2020 and the Hambidge Center in 2019. She has been featured in publications such as Ouch! Collective Vol. 2, Phoenix Literary Arts Magazine Vol. 65, and I Like Your Work Winter 2022 catalog. In 2018, Megan completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art and Dance at Tulane University, where she attended on a full scholarship awarded for excellence in writing.
Artist's Statement:
My practice contends with the futility associated with capturing the passing moment within the surface of a canvas in effort to more deeply know oneself and one’s position in life. This primary concern is framed by ideas of queerness, the fear of losing one’s physical function, and the desire to experience intimacy. In Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed says experiencing queerness in a heteronormative world is akin to being disoriented. I reenact that experience by starting a painting with a field of color that I am lost in. I orient myself by making the first gestural move, but oscillate between knowing and searching for what feels momentarily true.
The surface of the canvas is a record of my movement in the moment that the brush touches the cotton weave, memorializing both my delight and my grief as time passes. Mental and physical change is inevitable, and I insist on exploring the many ways I use my body in the present through the surface of a painting. Time takes us to places we cannot know until we arrive, and painting allows me to archive where I have been as I slip towards the unknown future. My paintings are personal anchors along the way to the elusive horizon as I look, learn, and experience myself through their surface.
Archives, lostness, and intimacy are the primary concerns of my studio practice at the moment, and I will continue to explore these concepts through color, abstraction, texture, stacked form, and softness.
The images pictured at right are a sampling of those submitted with Megan's application.
As Manifest Scholar in Residence Megan will be based out of M1, the new home of the Manifest Drawing Center program, and the future home of The Manifest Center for the Visual Arts, on Central Parkway.
See more and learn about Megan's work here:
www.meganwolfkill.com
Information on how to apply for future SIR or MAR awards can be found here.
