PATRICK MEAGHER - sculptor
Patrick Meagher was born in Regina Saskatchewan, the second of six children. From an early age, he was attracted to both art and the natural world. He created his first oil painting at the tender age of eight, and has continued to paint ever since. In 1982, after finishing high school, Meagher settled in Whistler, British Columbia, though work, his sense of adventure and the pursuit of art have taken him as far afield as the high arctic, China, Europe and Mexico, as well as the halls of academia in Montreal. At the age of 21, he traveled north for a one-year stint as the manager of a Hudson Bay store in the High Arctic community of Cambridge Bay, in what was then the Northwest Territories (now a part of Inuit-governed Nunavut). A natural adventurer, Meagher says he was “drawn to the absolute northernmost regions of Canada, wanting to explore this vast country before heading elsewhere”. He also embraced the opportunity to learn about Inuit methods of soapstone and caribou antler carving. In 1985, he returned to Whistler where he worked for the ski hill, helping to build the extensive network of ski lifts for the world-class resort. His experiences there with helicopter-dependent construction led to work doing selective logging by helicopter. For two years, he worked fulltime as a logger, traveling extensively up and down coastal B.C., from Washington State all the way to the Alaskan panhandle. Then in 1989, he enrolled in the fine arts program at Concordia University in Montreal, where he focused on sculpture and painting. During the course of his degree, he spent a semester in Germany, a hotbed for contemporary art. He supported himself through five years of art school by continuing to log in the summers.
|