Muralist Megan Lingerfelt just opened an exhibit of her studio work at Dogwood Arts Gallery in the Old City, and she has a piece in the Knox Walls project on North Broadway. She has always been drawn to the volume and repetition of botanical elements alongside intersecting engineered forms. Megan’s work often reflects her surroundings through a stylistic layering of color on surfaces of all kinds, with her compositions emphasizing color and contrast.
After growing up and attending college in Western North Carolina, Megan moved her studio to Seattle, where she discovered a love for murals – and thankfully brought that love back to East Tennessee, where she continues to exhibit and work in public art. When Megan creates for public spaces, she works to imbue the character of each specific site into the design so that it may serve as a monument to its location.
Mural painting comes with a few more factors to consider than working on paper or a canvas; it can be daunting to know where to start. Working on such a large scale requires a solid plan requiring a scaled digital design in order to paint as close to the concept as possible. Megan has learned that every project has new hurdles to clear and new lessons to be learned, with weather and timing being the most challenging aspects of her mural work. Last spring, Megan teamed up with Dogwood Arts to teach a workshop designed to introduce mural painting practices to artists interested in working on a large scale. She was able to give participants some hands-on experience and confidence to pursue mural opportunities on their own.
What’s next for Megan Lingerfelt? In addition to Knox Walls and her exhibit at the Dogwood Arts Gallery (open weekdays 9 am – 5 pm) through the 25th, she is working on a mural in Sweetwater and just finished her first mural festival in Macon, GA. Megan is also creating some designs that will be licensed to a local confectioner for their packaging – pulling from similar imagery as her murals. And murals are definitely her primary focus, so the rest of the year will bring some new pieces to Knoxville, a large one on a great wall downtown, as well as an XL piece in Athens, TN.
See more of Megan’s work at MeganLingerfelt.com and @meganlingerfelt on Instagram.