Meg Dooley

Painting is one of the ways I indulge an insistent curiosity about the commingling of architectural and organic elements in the world around me.  Originally attracted by the simple aesthetics of such couplings and contrasts, I have developed an interest in exploring the historical, cultural, socio-political – and most recently, mathematical and scientific – dimensions they also embody. 

My most recent work combines acrylics and a wide variety of other natural media, along with found objects, in an exploration of the concept of entropy. This BIG idea defies nutshell-sized definition, but it concerns transition from an ordered to a disordered state over a period of time. And it informs my work both literally and metaphorically. The materials I use are chosen somewhat randomly but with the idea that they will approach maximum entropy at different rates. Hence each painting takes on a life of its own, changing over time in ways I can guess at but will never see. As metaphor, ideas about entropy also guide the narrative content of my paintings, both personally and politically.