episode 071: Mega McGrath

Artist Mega McGrath has a beautiful, poetic soul. To be in her presence is to converse about the profound, and her ability to listen creates a natural sense of comfort. She grew up in a suburb outside of Vancouver in a traditional, steadfast family. Her mother consistently encouraged her instinctual creativity and musicality, from guitar lessons to drawing and painting. There was no specific structure to how she expressed her artistic inclinations. In high school, art became more prominent—Mega was encouraged and supported by an incredible teacher who allowed her a lot of creative license. Despite being raised Christian, she was drawn to Buddhism at a young age and began to foster her own relationship with spirituality outside what she was taught. After high school, she went to Emily Carr for a few years. It was an experience that was necessary, but she truly thrived once she dove headfirst into carving out her professional art career during third year. Since then, Mega's practice has continued to evolve from text art to ornamentation & abstraction—she’s worked with the likes of Nike, Red Bull Music, Hypebeast Inc., Dripped Coffee in New York, The Diamond, Tiffany & Co., Reigning Champ, Ivanhoe Cambridge, Wesgroup, and Lagree West Pilates Studio. In this conversation, we explore where her artistic nature came from and if she was acutely aware of her abilities as a child; navigating feelings and emotions through art; her deep passion for astrology, the planets and time; how Mega practices spirituality at this stage in her life and connecting to something greater than yourself; what language and words means to her; loving liminal spaces; her visual process as a seasonal cycle of death & rebirth; what she feels her future self would say to her current self; and much more.