The End is the Beginning

Zeitgeist is pleased to present, The End is the Beginning by Megan Lightell for our final show. Please join us in celebration for the opening during the Wedgewood-Houston Art Crawl, December 6, 5-9pm. On view through December 20th.

Statement

For decades I have struggled with darkness, dreading the shorter days of winter as a time to be endured. In an attempt to make peace with the dormant season, I looked to Katherine May’s Wintering and Leigh Ann Henion’s Night Magic, meditations on embracing the transformation that emerges from dark times and wonder to be discovered in the natural world of night.

Several encounters with darkness in recent years helped me resist the primal urge to avoid it. The disorientation of complete darkness in Mammoth Cave made my brain feel disconnected from my body, witnessing the total solar eclipse in 2024 made time stand still in an eerie vortex, and my first glimpse of northern lights shocked and delighted me beyond words, especially since I did not have to travel to the arctic circle to see them, as they appeared in the southern skies in a rare moment of radiance. Seeking darker skies, I slept under a double meteor shower in rural Ohio and took my family on a night pilgrimage to the rim of the Grand Canyon to see the most dramatic night skies of our lives. We went mothing for the first time at Bells Bend, learning to navigate trails in darkness and encountering in one night at least six new-to-us species, a snake and moths that had been invisible to us even though we have lived in this environment for decades.

I began exploring a different side of my painting practice that has for years involved spending time in natural spaces, making field studies and sketches in observation of the play of light on a particular place. These studies have served as touchstones of memory as I work on larger canvases back in my studio, recalling the experience of a place through color. Working at the edge of darkness for this series brought surprises. The experience of painting sketches in low light meant relying on muscle memory and intuition, painting more by feel than by reliance on eyesight. The forms became simple, the palette more expansive to allow for the range of subtlety that comes with the fading light.

Part of our daily and yearly cycle, periods of darkness remind us that rest, stillness, and withdrawal are essential to the revival, new growth and light that follow. Katherine May writes of the period of dark days: “We must learn to invite the winter in. We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how.” In times that feel heavy and opaque, the night and the long dark season teach us to be still, to recover, to survive, and to remember that lighter days will return.