Sandra Meigs is an iconic artist who reshaped the philosophical terrain of painting in an era that maligned painting. Pulling from philosophical texts, theory, popular culture, music and poetry, Meigs imbues her art with disarming, strategic and, at times, mordant humour. She is an astute risk taker, whose work is led by a feral imagination, resolutely following the barest whiff of imaginative trails into uncharted intimacies.

Meigs’ searching expressionism explores deeply embedded transgressive urges, recurrent fears, and elusive anxieties. She pushes paintings’ limits, both physically — when she shifts painting into the realm of sculpture — and conceptually, as she packs philosophy into enigmatic imagery. She delights in complicating what appears to be obvious. Profound, mischievous, agnostic and rebellious, Sandra Meigs’ art offers a quantum expansion of the psychogeographies of Canadian identity.

– Helen Marzolf (nominator), Open Space