“Uncharted Wonders” showcases a selection of Meaghan Crow’s surreal acrylic paintings. Whimsical, wacky, and wonderful, Crow's unique twists on reality create new imaginative scenes and creatures for the mind and eyes to ponder. This collection of works shows a range of Crow’s paintings from over the past few years. Each acts as a window into another place or dimension, taking elements of the familiar and combining them to create the unknown.
Crow has been interested in surrealism since she can first remember seeing surrealist works in middle school. A trip to the Dali Theatre-Museum in Spain after highschool reignited her interest. Midway through her Visual Arts Degree at the University of Victoria, Crow had the opportunity to dive into her fascination with surrealist landscape painting in an independent study program, where this work struck a chord with her and made her realize that creating surrealist works is one of her true passions. After completing her degree, she began painting surrealist creatures, combining distinctive features of animals with mushrooms and captivating eyes in series such as “Creatures as Confused as I Am” and “Fungeyes.”
Her passion for creating with the medium and her love for surreal subjects keeps her imagination active and swirling with new ideas.
For both her creatures and landscapes, Crow uses a combination of drawing and intuition to come up with ideas for her new works. Oftentimes she will have visions of her later creations before falling asleep, or while meditating. She sketches the ideas, and those ideas are often the ones she chooses to move forward with to create her paintings. Once she has a full concept for her piece, she uses many different photographic references in order to portray the different elements in a piece with detail and precision. This dance between creating something entirely new while also working through the technical techniques to portray a level of realism keeps her engaged, and continually developing as a painter. She hopes that her work lights up viewers' imaginations, and transports them out of their day-to-day lives into a moment of wonder.
Artist Bio:
Meaghan Crow is an acrylic painter residing on the traditional lands of the W̱SÁNEĆ people, in Brentwood Bay, BC. Her passion lies with surrealism, which allows her expansive imagination to play in her colourful, whimsical paintings. Her dreamlike landscapes combine elements of the familiar and unknown to create new worlds, both tempting to explore and uncertain. Similarly, Crow’s surreal creatures combine recognizable features of different animals and mushrooms to create hybrid characters, brought to life with captivating eyes. Crow has been painting in acrylics for over 12 years, and her passion for the medium led her to obtain an Honours BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Victoria in 2021. She is the recipient of several scholarships and awards, including a Takao Tanabe Award for painting in 2020, an Honourable Mention at the Sooke Fine Arts show in 2021, a Jamie Castles Undergraduate Research Award for Visual Arts for the 2020-2021 academic year and a Juror’s Choice Award at the Saanich Peninsula Arts and Crafts Society’s show in 2022. Crow’s paintings spark wonder, curiosity, and a sense of play, transporting viewers out of their day to day reality.
