Meghan Wilbar, Wings to the Sky, 2023, 24 x 24 x 2 inches. Oil on wood panel. Image courtesy of the artist.
Meghan Wilbar: The Road to Yesterday
December 11, 2023–March 17, 2024 @ Frasier
The Road to Yesterday highlights the breadth of Meghan Wilbar’s recent work from 2020 to 2023. Wilbar’s upbringing in Pueblo, Co and return after spending a decade in New York City continues to underline the tension found in her work between the familiar and the unknown through what she describes as a “lens of shifting impermanence.” Wilbar developed a strong eye for color, form, and craft and honed her skills in abstract expressionism during her training at the New York Studio School. Since returning to Colorado, she has taken to the open road, predominantly revisiting a five-mile stretch of Highway 96 where she compresses fleeting moments into recognizable compositions.
The accuracy with which Wilbar depicts the moodiness of southern Colorado’s expansive landscapes comes from spending days on the side of desolate highways, sketching plein air style from the studio she created inside her car. While working in her car-based studio, with her dog, Gehry, she developed a new mixed-media technique where she collages various textures and colors of torn paper to capture the same site specificity as her oil paintings. The way in which she adds and subtracts paper in accordance to shifting weather patterns mirrors our own ever-changing moods from yesterday to today.
About the artist
Meghan Wilbar has always been drawn to the landscape as a subject matter. She works with a pared down sensibility to capture the experience of the land and sky through texture and drawn line. She received her MFA from the New York Studio School in 2005 and her BA from Knox College in 2002. In the fall of 2010, she was an artist in the Bronx Museum, Artist in the Marketplace program and was featured in their AIM30 museum exhibition. She has received numerous artist-in-residences including the Chautauqua Institute Intensive Studio Program, Spiro Arts Foundation, Jentel Arts Foundation, History Colorado and the Wurlitzer Foundation. In 2016, she received a Colorado Creative Industries grant in support of her Veins of Steel project: a project chronicling the mining industry in Southern Colorado. Her works are included in the corporate collections of Denver Hilton Gardens, Westin Hotel, Parkview Hospital, University of Colorado Art Museum as well as numerous private collections. She is represented by Michael Warren Contemporary in Denver, CO and RA Modern in Crested Butte, CO.
Opening Reception
Monday, December 11, 5:30-7 pm at Frasier Canyon Center
Free
5:30 pm public reception
6 pm Q&A with the artist
BMoCA at Frasier is a collaboration between Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and Frasier Retirement Community. Curated by BMoCA, this series of exhibitions in The Canyons Gallery is an extension of the museum’s exhibition schedule. Each exhibition is complemented by a series of education programs.