Second Nature, 2023, Colored Pencil, 22.5 x 30 inches
Warren Megger
I am both confused and fascinated by the way our brains process visual information. I hope by blending different representational styles with abstraction in unfamiliar ways I can show people something they haven’t had to process before, and possibly help spark creativity. I take a lot of inspiration from music, specifically the ability music has to help a listener briefly experience a new state of mind.
My work is primarily drawn with colored pencil, but with other media in small amounts to add texture and movement. I try to use an “anything goes” approach when picking subject matter for drawings. Instead of planning what will be represented in advance, I let myself throw down anything I find exciting into a haphazard mess of ideas that doesn’t necessarily make sense together. Then I let the drawing become a kind of visual puzzle that is solved by making all the eclectic pieces feel cohesive.
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I think the work is more fun if you ignore everything I have to say about it and just allow yourself to see what you want to see.
Warren Megger (he/him) (b.2002)
If All Goes Well
My collection “If All Goes Well” is a visual representation of indecision and a constantly changing mind. As the project developed, I found myself working towards a different goal nearly every time I sat down to work, and all my ideas were eventually overwhelmed by the mess of other ideas around them. So, rather than trying to force unity, I tried to embrace the messy collage of ideas and allow myself to use the work as eclectic visual play with no overarching goal.
I think art is often a form of play, and—for me—a playful creative process will always yield more interesting results than processes based on diligent productivity.
I was inspired by the playful, distorted space of Surrealism and Cubism, the simple yet overwhelming paint textures of Mark Rothko and Agnes Martin, and the almost-primordial composition styles of Hilma af Klint and Jean Michel Basquiat.
I love artists and art movements like the above that are rooted in fields outside of art like psychology and psychoanalysis, math and physics, or even the spiritual/religious.
Given my struggle with indecision, I was especially interested in the psychology of the unconscious mind, memory, and cognitive development during this project. Carl Jung, Elizabeth Loftus, and Jean Piaget were among the psychologists I found most interesting and relevant to the project.
I wanted the viewing experience to be a form of play as well, and took inspiration from artists like M.C. Escher and Walter Wick. Escher’s subversive environments set the viewers’ eyes on a journey through the piece as they try to make sense of it, and Wick literally created a game out of exploring the image with I Spy. I think both approaches make looking at art a more exciting experience, and I tried to replicate that in my own way with this collection.