Meam Hartshorn

Born in Colorado / Works in Austin, TX

BIO

Meam Hartshorn was born and raised in Grand Junction, a small city in western Colorado where the landscapes and rich geologic history inspire much of her artwork. She graduated from Kenyon College with B.A. in Studio Art and Psychology, where she received Awards of Distinction from both departments and was awarded the Robert H. Hallstein Memorial Award in Art. Meam currently lives and works in Austin, Texas where she has exhibited with Sab Gallery, The Affordable Art Fair, Big Medium and more. Landscapes and cycles in nature inspire her work, which aims to bridge internal emotional experiences with those reflected in nature. Alongside her art practice, Meam is working her Master’s in Clinical Social Work from the University of Texas in Austin, where she combines her artistic background and love of nature to explore alternative and decolonized approaches to mental health care.

In my work, I explore the connection between external landscapes and our internal selves. Through shifting and undulating atmospheres, my paintings evoke both familiarity and surrealism, blurring the line between the internal and external. Inspired by the cyclical patterns of nature, my work examines the mirroring of landscapes with human experiences. These cycles of the natural world, such as erosion, succession, and metamorphosis, inspire the visual movement of the piece and illuminate the ways our natural environments can inform our internal and emotional experiences. Forms reminiscent of bones, mountains, and stone vacillate between being hard and soft, fluid and rigid. This process reveals patterns and repeating compositions in my work as if each painting is a fragment of one landscape slowly being revealed. To me, painting is a way of understanding the world outside and within myself. As an ode to these external and internal spaces, my paintings are an invitation to explore the connection between nature, spirituality, memory and emotion.