Megan Marlatt

Binche Carnival with Ensor Figure, 2018. Acrylic and confetti on paper, 12 x 24″

 

Bruges Bear and American Groundhog, 2018. Acrylic and confetti on paper, 12 x 24”

 

King Carnival Balloon, 2018. Gouache, black gesso, confetti on paper, 11 x 15”

 

Binche Carnival with Goya Fish, 2018. Acrylic and confetti on paper, 12 x 24”

 

Belgian Carnival, 2018. Gouache, ink, confetti on paper, 12 x 24”

 

Animals II, 2010. Acrylic, oil, and spray paint on 2 canvases, 77 x 66″ and 77 x 63.5″

 

Portrait of Mr. Hamburger Today, 2010. Acrylic and oil on round panel, 8″ diameter

 

Roger Plays with Copley’s Toys. Acrylic and oil on linen, 42 x 54″

 

Rubber Family Portrait. Acrylic and oil on linen, 15 x 20″

 

Studio view featuring Animals II

Twenty!
LYdM Turns 20 in 2015
9 January – 1 February 2015
Exhibition page >

 

Molded from Complicated Mixtures
21 January – 27 February 2011
Exhibition page >

 

Minds Wide Open
Women in the Arts
12 March – 18 April 2010
Exhibition page >

 

Toy: A Piece of Fun
5 – 29 March 2008
Exhibition page >

 

Celebrating Women in the Arts
Women’s History Month
1 – 20 March 2007
Exhibition page >

 

Ten Years After the NEA: Ten Years of Painting
5 – 30 August 2005

 

Biography

Megan Marlatt received her B.F.A. from the Memphis College of Art, TN (1981), studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME (1985), and received her M.F.A. at Rutgers University, NJ (1986). She has been a professor at the University of Virginia since 1988. She has received an Individual Artist Fellowship in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts, (1995), the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2006), the Virginia Commission on the Arts (1996) and The New Jersey State Council on the Arts (1985). Marlatt has had solo exhibitions at the Anthony Giordano Gallery of Dowling College in Long Island, (2005), the Dupree Gallery in Philadelphia, (2005), “Art Nurnberg 8,” Festival of the Arts, Germany (1993) and the District of Columbia Arts Center, Washington (1992). Her group exhibitions include the Educational Alliance Art Gallery, NY (2001), The Painting Center, NY (2000), Snyder Fine Art, NY (1997), Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Parson’s School of Design, NY (both 1993). Marlatt’s public art works have encompassed a fresco mural completed for Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Rapidan, VA (1996); and site-specific works for Hillwood Museum, NY (1993) and Atlanta Arts Festival, Georgia (1991).

Awards
2006 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, Individual Artists Fellowship in Painting
1996 Virginia Commission on the Arts, Individual Artist Fellowship in Painting
1995 National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Artist Fellowship in Painting
1990 UVa Rome Fellowship Exchange Program, Rome, Italy
1987 Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Individual Artist Fellowship in Painting
1985 New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Individual Fellowship in Painting
1985 Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Full Tuition Scholarship, Skowhegan, ME

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2005 Cultural Vertigo, The Anthony Giordano Gallery, Dowling College, Long Island, NY
2005 Cultural Vertigo, Dupreé Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2005 X: Ten Years After the NEA, Les Yeux du Monde Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2004 Of Two Minds, Woodberry-Forest School, Orange, VA
2003 Specimens and Artifacts: Reflections on Lewis and Clark, Pyro Gallery, Louisville, KY
1993 Art Nürnberg 8, Festival of the Arts, Nuremberg, Germany
1992 Houseworks,District of Columbia Arts Center,Washington, DC
1991 University of Arkansas at Little Rock
1991 Yvonne Rapp Gallery, Louisville, Kentucky
1985 Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, IL
1983 Clough-Hansom Gallery, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN

Selected Group Exhibitions
2007 Inner Child: Good and Evil in the Garden of Memories, with Elena Sisto, Randy Bolton, Katerina Lanfranco and others, Hunterdon Museum, Clinton, NJ
2006 Bethesda Painting Awards/Finalists Exhibition, Frazer Gallery,  Bethesda, MD
2004 Al Fresco: Contemporary Art in Plaster and Pigment, curated by Robert Bunkin, Schiavone/Edward Contemporary Art, Baltimore, MD
2004 Lucky 13, ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA
2002 500 Works on Paper 1922-2002, Gary Snyder Fine Arts, New York, NY
2002 Holiday Show, Erin Devine Gallery, Louisville, KY
2002 2002 Viterbo Student/Faculty Exhibition, Montserrat College of Arts, Boston, MA
2001 Danko-Marlatt-Schaffer, Murray State University, Murray, KY
2001 Fresco/Fresh, with Italo Scanga, Yvonne Jacquette, and others, Educational Alliance Art Gallery, New York, NY
2001 Three Ring Circus, Rockville Arts Place, Maryland
2000 Group Exhibition, curated by Sam Messer, The Painting Center, New York, NY
1999 Spirit Earth, Bernard Maisner Fine Art Gallery, Bay Head, NJ
1998 All Media Group Show, The Turtle Gallery, Deer Isle, Maine
1997 A New Naturalism, Snyder Fine Art, New York, NY
1997 The Whereabouts of Beauty, The Hand Workshop, Richmond, VA
1997 Larry and Co., The University of Memphis Art Museum, TN
1997 The Gramercy International Contemporary Art Fair, Snyder Fine Art, New York, NY
1996 Frescoes in collaboration with artist, Italo Scanga, University of California, San Diego
1996 Annual Invitational Exhibition, Spark Gallery, Denver, CO
1996 Picture This: Artists Interpret Text”, A.C.T. Gallery, Detroit, MI
1995 Fresco, Elan Vital Gallery, Boston, MA
1994 Fresco, A Contemporary Perspective, Boston College Museum of Art, MA
1994 Interior Essence, Akus Gallery, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT
1993 Fresco: A Contemporary Perspective, with Alison Saar, Italo Scanga, etc, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York; Parson’s School of Design Exhibition Center, New York, NY
1993 Recycled Ideas, Craven Arts Council and Art Gallery, New Bern, NC
1993 Touch, Traveling Exhibition touring the Mid Atlantic Region in affiliation with The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and The Hand Workshop, Richmond,VA
1992 10 Steps, Muranushi Lederman Inc and Horodner Romley Gallery, New York, NY
1992 Annual Cite’ Artists’ Show, Cite’ Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
1990 3 Women in the South, Robinson/Willis Gallery, Nashville,TN
1990 The Street, The Slogan, The Artist, District of Columbia Arts Center, Washington, DC
1990 Objects D’Art, A Touring Exhibit of the Commonwealth of Virginia in affiliation with The Hand Workshop and The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
1989 Mythic Moderns, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT
1989 Embracing Mysteries, Souyun Yi Gallery, New York, NY
1988 New Forces, Ceres Gallery, New York, NY
1987 Emerging Artist, Princeton Fine Arts Gallery, Princeton, NJ
1987 NJSCA Fellowship Show, The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ

Murals and Public Art Works
2007 Public Art Commission, a temporary 5-story digital banner that depicts the history of Rockville, Maryland
2005 Finalist, Rockville’s Town Square Public Art Project, Rockville, MD
2000 Site-Specific window drawings and asphalt paintings, Hindsight/Fore-site: Art for the New Millennium, group exhibition with Ann Hamilton, Dennis Oppenheim, Lucio Pozzi and others, The University of Virginia Art Museum, Charlottesville, VA
2000 First Alternate/Finalist, New York City Percent for the Arts, proposal for stained glass window at P.S. 66, Canarsie, Brooklyn, NY
2000 Finalist Award, Arts Council of Montgomery County, for proposal of Crescent Trail Tunnel temporary art installation, Maryland
1996 Fresco Mural, Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Rapidan, VA
1993 Site-Specific asphalt painting, Hillwood Museum, C.W. Post Campus, L.I. University, NY
1991 Site-Specific asphalt and grass painting, Atlanta Arts Festival, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, GA
1991 Fresco Mural, Charlottesville City Hall Annex Building, Charlottesville, VA
1991 Site-Specific asphalt and grass painting, Louisville Visual Art Association, Louisville, KY
1990 Site-Specific asphalt painting, in conjunction with The Street, The Slogan, The Artist, District of Columbia Arts Center, DC
1987 Fresco Mural, St. Michael’s Chapel, Piscataway, NJ
1987 Community Mural, Washington House of East Harlem, Cityarts Workshop, New York, NY
1987 Mural, The Memphis Pink Palace Museum of Natural History, Memphis, TN
1987 Community Mural, Casa P.R.A.C. of Vineland, NJ, organized through the Walt Whitman Cultural Center of Camden, NJ
1986 Fresco Mural, Memphis College of Art, Memphis, TN
1986 Site-Specific asphalt painting, Trenton Art Museum, Trenton, NJ
1986 Community Mural, C.P.E.#2 of East Harlem, Cityarts Workshop, New York, NY

Selected Publications
2007 Review, “Childish things: Hunterdon exhibit remembers innocence ” by Dan Bischoff, The Star-Ledger, New Jersey, October 14.
2005 Review, “Megan Marlatt, Cultural Vertigo” by Helen Harrison, The New York Times (Long Island Edition), March 6.
2005 Article, “Spongebob Must be Stopped…” by Gerry Dantone, The Improper Magazine, Westhampton, NY, April.
2003 Book, “Siting Jefferson: Contemporary Artists Interpret Thomas Jefferson’s Legacy” by Jill Hartz, University of Virginia Press.
2002 Book Cover, “Beyond Babel: A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages” edited by John Kaltner and Steven L. McKenzie, Society of Biblical Literature.
2002 Article, Adbusters, Vancouver, BC, Canada, June/July.
20002 Review, Group Exhibition, Sarah Sargent, Art Papers, June/July.
2000 Book, “Exhibitionism, Art in an Era of Intolerance” by Lynn Munson, Ivan R. Dee Publisher
1998 Article, “The New Gouache” by Donna Dorian Wall, Southern Accents, July/Aug.
1998 Catalog, “The Whereabouts of Beauty”, The Hand Workshop, Richmond, VA
1997 Article, “Recovering Sacred Spaces: the Art of Megan Marlatt”, by Sharon Leiter, Albemarle Magazine, Apr/May.
1996 Article, “The Rainbow After the Flood” by Dana Hull, The Washington Post, July 13.
1994 Catalog, “Fresco: A Contemporary Perspective”, The Snug Harbor Cultural Center
1993 Catalog, Art Nürnberg 8, Nürnberg, Germany
1993 Review, “Art Nurnberg 8”, Michael Becker, Nurnberger Nachrichten, April 24, Germany
1992 Article, “Cravings; Food Into Sculpture” by Jude Schwendenwien, Sculpture Magazine, Nov/Dec.
1992 Catalog, “Houseworks”, solo exhibition at District of Columbia Arts Center, DC
1991 Catalog, The Atlanta Arts Festival, GA
1991 Review, “Objets d’Art” by Ann Glenn Crowe, Art Papers, February.

Employment
1988-Present Professor of Art, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
2002 – 2005 Visiting Artist, Montserrat College of Art, Summer Program, Italy

Education
1986 MFA, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
1985 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME
1981 BFA, Memphis College of Art, Memphis, TN

Visiting Artist and Residences
2004 Artist-in-Residence, Art Space, Big Tancook Island, Nova Scotia, Canada
2000 Artist-in-Residence, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sweet Briar, VA
1999 Visiting Artist, Randolph-Macon Women’s College, Lynchburg, VA
1997 Mentor, Careers Workshop, College Art Association, New York, NY
1995 Juror, “All Mixed Up”, group exhibition, Associated Artists of Winston-Salem, NC
1994 Panelist, “National Recognition: An Elusive Concept for the Artist-Educator”, College Art Association, New York, NY
1993 Artist-in-Residence, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Affiliate Program, Richmond, VA
1993 Visiting Artist/Juror, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
1992 Artist-in-Residence, Cite’ Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
1990 Visiting Artist,  Hampden-Sydney College, Hampton-Sydney, VA.

Selected Collections
The Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Gary Snyder and Kristen Accola, New York, NY
Margareta Douglas, Charlottesville, VA
Randolph Macon Woman’s College, Lynchburg, VA
Charlotte Minor, Richmond, VA
Evansville Museum of Art, Evansville, IN
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY
Aaron and Bobbi Fine, Philadelphia, PA
Marion Dunham, Princeton, NJ
John & Gail Marshall, Rapidan, VA
Castle MacLaughlin, Cambridge, MA
Coleman & Powell, Pipersville, PA
Dee & Pug Winokur, Greenwich, CT
Theodore Simon, Philadelphia, PA
Rebecca Thompson, Little Rock, AR
Sarah Sargent, Somerset, VA

 Matter matters. My task as a visual artist is to transform tangible matter. We live in a world of matter that informs all of our senses, evokes our most primordial emotions and roots us to the universe. Therefore, I have learned that the key to making miraculous art is less likely to be held in the artist’s mind than in her hands. Refuting the notion that his work manifested a philosophy of transcendence, the modern abstract painter, Marc Rothko insisted that he was giving us a material experience, the sensuousness of the world in all its richness. According to him, his work was “about” as well as “of” this world. This is why I hold a deep respect for the matter I manipulate and the ensuing enmeshment of material and ideas that occurs in my creative process. This enmeshment in representational painting often occurs when the material and the motif become one. When realism is evoked through the plasticity of the paint medium itself and the canvas becomes more than a mere illusionist picture. This is the heavy weight of Morandi’s paint turning into wet clay when he paints his still life objects as if he were painting gravity itself. Or the oily sea of Turner’s pictures when they submerge, churn and float in unison with his palette. Or Van Gogh’s “Potato Eaters” that he expressed to his brother, Theo, is an attempt to make the paint as the dirt that the “eaters” ate on their potatoes.

The artist William DeKooning once said that oil painting was invented to depict flesh. So, I ask, why was acrylic paint invented? I had always snubbed the medium as inferior to the great tradition of oil painting. That was, until I started to paint plastic toys and then my sixteenth century painting material failed miserably to depict a mid-twentieth century substance. For all its modeling and illusionism, somewhere in my pictures of plastic toys it had to flatten out like melted plastic stuck to canvas. Only with acrylic paint, (plastic virtually painting plastic), could I produce that magically place where the material and the motif fused into one.

Beyond the material, the motifs in my paintings struggle. The events of 9/11 profoundly shook my illusions of a safe and secure world. So the armies of cartoon characters and salvage store superheroes that make up my piles of plastic toys have become a personal metaphor for the varying factions of external forces rallying to destroy or save us. In addition, abstractionism and realism struggle to co-exist on the picture plane and the antithetical applications of loose expressionism and focused control scuffle to find resolution. I paint the toys from observation and I fight to find visual clarity as I fall into vertigo over the extreme colors and mass consumer objects. Still, it’s the depiction of plastic that I feel makes my work truly contemporary and where it can best make a contribution to the history of painting. What is this matter that we have surrounded ourselves with in increasing amounts since the 1960’s and how do I make humans aware of its omnipresence in their lives?

Selected Publications

2007 Review, “Childish things: Hunterdon exhibit remembers innocence ” by Dan Bischoff, The Star-Ledger, New Jersey, October 14.
2005 Review, “Megan Marlatt, Cultural Vertigo” by Helen Harrison, The New York Times (Long Island Edition), March 6.
2005 Article, “Spongebob Must be Stopped…” by Gerry Dantone, The Improper Magazine, Westhampton, NY, April.
2003 Book, “Siting Jefferson: Contemporary Artists Interpret Thomas Jefferson’s Legacy” by Jill Hartz, University of Virginia Press.
2002 Book Cover, “Beyond Babel: A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages” edited by John Kaltner and Steven L. McKenzie, Society of Biblical Literature.
2002 Article, Adbusters, Vancouver, BC, Canada, June/July.
20002 Review, Group Exhibition, Sarah Sargent, Art Papers, June/July.
2000 Book, “Exhibitionism, Art in an Era of Intolerance” by Lynn Munson, Ivan R. Dee Publisher
1998 Article, “The New Gouache” by Donna Dorian Wall, Southern Accents, July/Aug.
1998 Catalog, “The Whereabouts of Beauty”, The Hand Workshop, Richmond, VA
1997 Article, “Recovering Sacred Spaces: the Art of Megan Marlatt”, by Sharon Leiter, Albemarle Magazine, Apr/May.
1996 Article, “The Rainbow After the Flood” by Dana Hull, The Washington Post, July 13.
1994 Catalog, “Fresco: A Contemporary Perspective”, The Snug Harbor Cultural Center
1993 Catalog, Art Nürnberg 8, Nürnberg, Germany
1993 Review, “Art Nurnberg 8”, Michael Becker, Nurnberger Nachrichten, April 24, Germany
1992 Article, “Cravings; Food Into Sculpture” by Jude Schwendenwien, Sculpture Magazine, Nov/Dec.
1992 Catalog, “Houseworks”, solo exhibition at District of Columbia Arts Center, DC
1991 Catalog, The Atlanta Arts Festival, GA
1991 Review, “Objets d’Art” by Ann Glenn Crowe, Art Papers, February.