Megan Broughton
I seek to inspire care for the climate by bringing faraway, sublime environments that are crucial to our everyday lives closer to home. My work is informed by onsite studies in the Arctic, whose materiality and deep time shapes my practice and guides my choice of materials. I create atmospheric images that are inspired by the Arctic yet also relate to my everyday life, most directly by living in the foggy coastal city of San Francisco. Throughout my work, representational imagery is playfully swept away. Portals seem to form as pictures change over the course of a series, forming new shapes and entities.
A fascination with natural elements and transformation fuels my work. I use ice, fog, and air currents to process at-risk local and global environments. Ancient glacial ice holds the earth’s story which is continually lost, in the form of melting icebergs, to sea. Fog is a playful, powerful, shapeshifter that courts imagination and obscures reality. Air currents and wind are like a shared global breath yet they are considered invisible. I work with these elements in relation to recordkeeping, transformation, and magical realism. This genre is exciting not for the magic itself but for where it overlaps with reality, encouraging us to envision what could be and appreciate the magic that already exists.
