Megan Dyck
Megan Dyck, “Lorem Gypsum”, 2023, Acrylic on Birch Panel, 30 x 30 inches
As a painter preoccupied with deconstructed imagery of the body, Megan Dyck’s work draws from fragmented representations of the human figure as observed in film, photography, and social media. Deploying collage as an essential preliminary process where isolated components of the body are arranged to form new composite images, her paintings carefully merge scenes of close-up faces, isolated body parts, and cut-away gestures. By applying cinematic considerations of splicing, super-imposing, sequencing, and montage within a pictorial context, these works collectively investigate states of anxiety and euphoria associated with experiencing desire. Holding a reverence for the phenomenology of colour perception, Megan’s painting practice also integrates colour-field abstraction as a mainstay extension of her studio research.
Megan is an artist and educator living and working in Calgary, AB. She received her MFA from the University of Victoria, and holds a BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts. In addition to her studio practice, Megan teaches painting and colour theory at AUArts.
“Colour studies are a playful arena of experimentation for me. Within my studio research as a figurative painter, these small abstractions provide a lighthearted counterpoint to the highly detailed processes of painting realistic representations of people. Consciously small and modular, my colour studies have an object-like quality, and can be arranged in a myriad of groupings to showcase varying colour relationships. Here chroma, shape, and the physicality of paint are theatrical characters in a collection of imaginary abstract vignettes.” -Megan Dyck
“Colour studies are a playful arena of experimentation for me. Within my studio research as a figurative painter, these small abstractions provide a lighthearted counterpoint to the highly detailed processes of painting realistic representations of people. Consciously small and modular, my colour studies have an object-like quality, and can be arranged in a myriad of groupings to showcase varying colour relationships. Here chroma, shape, and the physicality of paint are theatrical characters in a collection of imaginary abstract vignettes.” -Megan Dyck
Megan Dyck is an artist and educator living and working in Calgary, AB. Dyck holds a BFA in Painting from AUArts and earned an MFA in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria. In addition to her own studio practice, Dyck has worked as an educator and researcher for the last 10 years, the majority of which have been at AUArts (formerly ACAD), teaching drawing, painting and colour theory. Dyck has been awarded Individual Faculty Research Grants from the AUArts Professional Affairs Committee in 2017, 2022 and 2023, and the Visual Arts Individual Project Grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Apertures:
Calgary-based Megan Dyck’s figurative imagery investigates the ubiquity of photography and aesthetic qualities of glitch that occur in digital and analog communication as metaphors for psychological isolation, loneliness, and desire. Transcribing benign and dramatic inadvertent visual flaws observed in contemporary and historical lens-based images of people, her paintings and drawings collectively address instances of fragmentation, warping, distortion, and double-exposure as emblems for the incongruousness of the human psyche. Co-opting pixelated selfies, frozen excerpts of online meetings, found film negatives, and lagging video-clips encountered on social media as primary visual referents, Dyck’s work attempts to convey the unease of being a consumer of images in the digital age: moving perpetually between a sense of connection and alienation.
Prism Rooms:
Drawing from aesthetics of dream pop and New Romantic music and dance subcultures, Megan Dyck’s latest body of figurative paintings features disembodied faces engrossed in states of euphoria and limerence. Merging two of her abiding artistic obsessions: direct gaze in portraiture and Paul Klee’s theory of polyphonic color, Dyck’s images are a dual meditation on the enigmatic nature of the human face and the perceptual phenomena of chromesthesia—where sound evokes color. Situated in unbound fields of color, these images harken hazy dance floor encounters, synth sounds, sequined skin, and semi-trance states. Sensuous, atmospheric, and submerged in sparkling reverb, Dyck’s paintings are informed by a collage sensibility where preliminary photomontages function as reference images that are later painted in sections to form a cinematic mosaic of floating visages. This mise-en-scène of deconstructed portraits conjures both intimate and psychedelic interactions.
