Letter from the Artist:

Megan Shay is a painter and photographer born in Ithaca, NY where she continues to live half of the year. She trained as a sculptor and poet and turned to photography when her career veered away from the Arts in the mid-1990’s. Fifteen years ago, she and her husband began to travel intensively. She uses photography to document their travels, collect imagery for her work as a garden designer and writer and as fine art. She is new to painting, although she has been photographing things to paint for thirty years!

The work at Satori is comprised of selections from two series of art photography (Naturerotica and On Pavement) and a few of her recent pastel paintings from Maine, Florida and the Finger Lakes. The complete series can be found on her website: ateliershay.com – she frequently makes additions to these and other series like National Parks. Sign up for her monthly newsletter to stay apprised of new additions and new series as well as picking up some travel tips and itinerary ideas.

Naturerotica is a trademarked group of work that captures nature imitating the human body such as a nearly perfectly formed woman’s torso in rock found on a California beach or vestigial nubbins and folds of Sycamore bark in Delaware that resemble elderly breasts or glacially scoured granite against a blue Maine sky that could be a derrière.

On Pavement is a series about the beauty to be found at the end of a natural life cycle. The subject matter is always leaves, seed pods or blossoms on the ground. Whether it’s the intense golden yellow of autumnal Ginko leaves on blacktop or the ghostly translucence of a Texas Olive blossom or the surprise of a bi-colored crabapple leaf with its veins magnified by dew, these images often evoke a sense of wonder or surprise at the beauty that we ordinarily walk over.

Soft Pastel, Megan’s painting medium, is raw, pure pigment formed into sticks resembling chalk. She usually paints on a textured paper that is like a fine sandpaper, which gathers a depth of pigment that you can see in the vibrancy of the colors. There are a few paintings from Maine, a destination she has traveled to yearly since she was 4 years old. Last year, she participated in a Plein Air painting event at Frederick Church’s home, Olana, which he famously landsculpted and landscaped to provide good views for his enormous paintings which then toured the USA and Europe to show what the “New World” looked like. There are two small landscapes she painted there. “The Robin” is a personal favorite of hers, painted from a photo of a robin at the Cornell Botanical Gardens a few years ago

You can follow her on Instagram @ateliershay and @gardenworksflorida or check out her website at ateliershay.com. She’s always happy to work with you one-on-one to select a piece or sort out framing. You can email her at [email protected] to arrange an appointment.

~Megan Shay~