Becky MacKeigan | Artist Statement

While growing up in Cape Breton, NS, I've always seemed to do everything with a slight offbeat creativeness. Leaning slightly out of the norm, I try to make work that is humorous and personal, and lightly based on some of my travels so far. Finding it difficult to stay in any one place for too long, I feel my art is a big inspiration to keep me moving on, searching, and experiencing life.

In 2005, two years after dropping out of the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, I helped put together an art show featuring various works by former art school students. It was aptly named The Dropout Show, and we showed our work to prove people can make worthy and meaningful work without the institutional persuasion we had recieved years prior. I have always used drawing, painting and photographing as ways to express myself, and although I loved my time at art school, I didn't feel it was necessary in qualifying me as an "artist". I do what I love. I've been in numerous group art shows over the years and really enjoy adding to and learning from local art scenes, wherever it may be!

I've learned to turn my surroundings into inspiration, to make me feel at home wherever I may find myself. The walls in my childhood bedroom in my parents house are still home to one of my biggest permanent collections, along with comissioned murals at a beach guest house in Edwardsville, NS. Sadly, what would have been the oldest of my permanent collections (the wall of my 3rd grade classroom) never quite made it past the school cleaning lady. And then also because the school was torn down.

My true love was medium format photography but with the realization that the cost of a decent camera, film, and a darkroom is out of my reach, and when I compare that to "dollar store" paints and materials, painting has just been a more realistic endeavor. Whether it's been painting canvas, walls, or various other odds and ends it has always been a big part of my life, job or no job.

I've been lucky enough to get by in life by doing what I love. From time to time I find myself consumed with photoshop while designing anything from brochures, to cd layouts, to t-shirts. I've been able to keep up my other creative love of photography with the instant gratification that is my digital SLR camera. I've also picked up needle-felting and love creating little soft sculptures... and actually noticed a similairity between stabbing away at the wool roving and tattooing.. Go figure!

And on that note, with this journey I've begun in tattooing I know I'm on the right track more then ever. To find something that fits so well with your lifestyle and also challenges your creativity daily is so exciting, and I'm so appreciative that I've come across it. I hope to travel with this, and continue learning and growing with it, meanwhile always working on paintings and anything else that comes my way! All I've ever wanted is to make art, be near the ocean and have some animals around me.. I don't think that's too much to ask :)

I will always continue in life experiencing and watching it through artists' eyes, and then making it my own. It's what keeps me sane.

Peace out! -Beckz xo