About

Meagan Stirling received her MFA degree at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and her BA from Whitworth University. Her current work is interested in perceptions of risk and safety and caregiving. She enjoys working in multiple mediums, including printmaking, installation, and performance. Recent exhibitions include Matter + Spirit, a traveling exhibition, Whitworth University Oliver Gallery, and Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara. Her artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. 

Stirling works with and helped found a local Santa Barbara organization called Print Power. Offering screen printing workshops, trauma survivors are given the tools to create visual messages that may be too difficult to verbalize, and to process trauma in healthy and community-driven ways.

Stirling currently lives in Santa Barbara, California where she is an Associate Professor of Art at Westmont College. 

Artist Statement

The overly-exaggerated idea of safety that becomes weakened by chance is deeply rooted in the risk and reward of living life. The paradox of daily life as safe and comfortable is juxtaposed with its polar opposite, the uncertainties of life. Working primarily within the context of printmaking and installation, my artwork exposes how safety is perceived and its relation to spaces and physical objects.

The concept of safety and its antithesis of danger is connected to my experience growing up in the seemingly perfect suburban community of Littleton, Colorado, where I attended Columbine High School. 

There is risk in the process of making art (printmaking processes are quirky and require lots of time and often multiple attempts to get right); uncertainty is an essential, inevitable, and all-pervasive companion within my practice.

Contact information

meaganstirling@gmail.com

Instagram: @meaganstirling