Artist Spotlight: Megan Broughton
MEGAN BROUGHTON uses experimental etching and drawing techniques to inspire care for and curiosity about the climate by bringing faraway environments closer to home. Her time spent on Arctic sailing vessels taught her that “Everything is always changing and adapting and that isn’t necessarily a big scary thing if you’re in tune with it and able to do the same. It’s when you aren’t paying attention, or take things for granted, that things go sideways.”
Megan Broughton, photo by Kelsey Floyd
Megan, tell us about your creative practice.
I’m a visual artist using experimental etching and drawing techniques to process at-risk local and global environments. A fascination with natural elements and transformation fuels my work and I am particularly interested in air currents, fog, and bodies of ice and water. I am heavily influenced by the famous pale blue dot photograph, onsite studies in the Arctic, and geologic deep time. My imagery is often fragmented as if swept away on the wind or lost to time. Atmospheric shapes chase and erase solid forms as imagery disappears and reforms. This sense of losing one’s way within the work echoes the damaging ways in which geopolitics and capitalism have affected planetary health.
I seek to inspire care for and curiosity about the climate by bringing faraway, sublime environments that are crucial to our everyday lives closer to home. I’m very excited to start working in 3D this coming year, with the opportunity to design an interactive piece that will be shown in San Francisco in Spring 2027.
photo by Kelsey Floyd
What led you to this work?
I worked at The Oxbow School in Napa, CA for 9 years and spent several of those years collaborating with my coworker, Alex Keilty, who taught Environmental Science. We led students on backpacking trips in Northern California and wanted to develop a more integrated Printmaking and Environmental Science curriculum. To that end, we went on The Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard, Norway in summer 2019, intending to study that model and emulate it in our curriculum.
Then Oxbow temporarily closed for a year during the initial wave of COVID lockdowns. I suddenly had ample time to focus on my own artmaking for really the first time ever. All those Svalbard observations and experiences funneled themselves into the studio instead of into the curriculum, and it completely reset by practice. I stayed on at the school to help it reopen in summer 2021 and then left at the end of that school year to pursue a full-time art studio career.
I’ve since returned to the Arctic for another artist residency in Greenland on a sailing boat. During that residency, we took turns on deck for 24/7 ice watches, keeping a lookout to avoid hitting icebergs. That experience has really propelled my work the past several years.
The way you capture time in your work feels like a meditation on sustainability, loss, and transformation. What can we learn about survival by paying attention to the natural world around us?
Something that was really driven home for me while on ice watches in Greenland is that you have to pay absolute attention. You have to give yourself completely over to being in one spot and really figuring out what is going on. Things are happening whether or not you’re aware of it and the more able you are to read a situation, the better your chances are. Everything is always changing and adapting and that isn’t necessarily a big scary thing if you’re in tune with it and able to do the same. It’s when you aren’t paying attention, or take things for granted, that things go sideways.
photo by Kelsey Floyd
What’s one thing that makes your career more sustainable?
I’ve learned that learning how to say “no,” protecting my time, and seeking out good fits for myself and my work has created more time for focused pursuits.
What’s coming up next for you?
At the moment, I’m pretty focused on making new work and a full slate of teaching commitments rather than showing. But my work is on view until April 25th at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley as part of their annual auction. It’s a beautiful show and Kala is such a pillar of the Bay Area Arts Community.
And I’ll be sharing big news about my Spring 2027 show in San Francisco with my mailing list subscribers soon. Sign up for my mailing list to get the details!
