36 × 20.5 in
 in
 cm
$6,500
This compelling painting by Canadian contemporary artist Sandra Meigs titled Mary. Down the Road I look and There Runs Mary, is a visual narrative rendered in simplified form. Based on the song Sad Waters by Nick Cave, this diptych represents the road and the river travelled by Mary and its use of intense pigments creates an emotionality and immediacy that Meigs is known for. In the vast expanse of colour, the viewer spots the tiny figure of Mary perched at the end of the road above a vertical drop – a figure that punctuates the expansiveness of the two canvases with human fragility and existential angst. Meigs’ signature use of pathos brings poetry and narrative to her work even through her use of saturated, impenetrable colour.
Sad Waters (by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds)
Down the road I look and there runs Mary
Hair of gold and lips like cherries
We go down to the river where the willows weep
Take a naked root for a lover’s seat
That rose out of the bitten soil
But bound to the ground by creeping ivy coils
O Mary you have seduced my soul
(And I don’t know right from wrong)
Forever a hostage of your child’s world
And then I ran my tin-cup heart along
The prison of her ribs
And with a toss of her curls
That little girl goes wading in
Rollin her dress up past her knee
Turning these waters into wine
Then she platted all the willow vines
Mary in the shallows laughing
Over where the carp dart
Spooked by the new shadows that she cast
Across these sad waters and across my heart
| Medium | Painting |
| Signature | Signed |
| Frame | Framed |
| Condition | excellent |
| Seller | Private |
| Location | Vancouver, Canada |
| Provenance | Private Collection, Vancouver (gift of the Artist). |
For over 35 years Sandra Meigs has created vivid, immersive, and enigmatic paintings that combine complex narratives with comic elements. She derives the content of her work from her own personal experiences, and develops these to create visual metaphors related to the psyche.
Through her work, Meigs wants the viewer to feel richly engaged, jubilant, and most of all, transported to an imaginary universe.
Meigs is dedicated to painting and to the possibilities of enchantment that painting presents through colour and form. She believes that the very authenticity of one’s experience offers proof that what is imagined when looking at a painting is as real as anything else that one experiences in the world. She has also inter-woven sculpture, film, sound, and other media in her works.
Born in Baltimore in 1953, Meigs studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (B.F.A. 1975) and Dalhousie University (M.A. 1980). She has lived and worked in Canada since 1973. Sandra Meigs has been a dedicated teacher at the University of Victoria for over 20 years, and has mentored hundreds of visual art students throughout her professorship.
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