September 15, 2025

Fluorescent flowers, harlequin patterns and still lives, Meghan Gerety’s relief paintings are an exploration of the dialogue between the natural world and abstraction. Inspired by Dutch vanitas and memento mori paintings, Gerety uses skulls,
flowers and symbolic objects to confront  the passage of time. Employing the processes of drawing, carving, painting and print making, her carved-plywood works simultaneously embody qualities of painting and the three-dimensionality of sculpture. Meghan has evolved her woodblock printing process over years of studio practice referencing nature and the history of art to create a formal language all her own.

A long time resident of Marfa, now based in Brooklyn, this week we visit with Meghan Gerety in her Brooklyn studio and chat about the evolution of her artistic process. Her exhibition, Weather Poems recently opened at Gensco and a new series of works entitled Street Weeds is now on view at Garza Marfa.

GARZA: What are the primary mediums you use in your practice?
MG: My current medium is acrylic on carved plywood.

GARZA: What are the themes or subjects you're working with when you're thinking about a work or a series?
MG: I read a lot about nature, poetry, art, biographies, listen to music, yoga, philosophy, spirituality, so all of that, everything that interests me in my life and the pursuit of truth in my life goes into my art, it is me.

GARZA: Why paint and wood as your chosen mediums?
MG: My work over the years has progressed to this current point. After making drawings for 15 years I began making large wood blocks on plywood, which I would use to make prints. But I considered the blocks the finished pieces as much as the prints themselves. The work then evolved into painting on carved wood and the printing part was not always present in the work. That has evolved to where I am now which is carved and cut plywood, painted.

GARZA: What are you currently excited about working on right now in the studio?
MG: I just created a new body of work entitled ‘Weather Poems’ which I'm showing at Gensco in Marfa, TX. The word "raga" comes from a Sanskrit word meaning "color". The resulting music is intended to evoke specific emotions or "color the mind" of the listener. This work is the freest work I have ever made and feels like the most direct line from my creative unconscious to physical form while being aware of the weight of art history and accumulated knowledge. I'm creating archetypes of landscape, nature and art history; abstracted memento mori, landscape as memento mori, the ephemeral fused with the concrete to get to the essence of my truth through art.

GARZA: What are you doing when you are not making art ?
MG: When I'm working in the studio I feel most aligned with myself. When I’m not making art I’m living my best life! Running, swimming, raising my son, loving, cooking, eating, playing, laughing!