Meghan Walley

My name is Meghan Walley and I live in Gibsons, British Columbia with my chocolate lab, Luna. I have an MA in archaeology and first explored my interest in scientific illustration drawing artifacts and creating visual reconstructions of archaeological sites.

Some of my life’s earliest memories are of interactions with the natural world: tiny crabs skittering out from under rocks, icicles forming on fallen branches that lay across a creek, the smell of blackberries fermenting in the cooling dusk of August.

The natural world has always stirred my sense of creativity. The poet Mary Oliver wrote, “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

In the summer of 2020, I found myself alone, and by some miracle I had the clarity to go to the forest. Every morning I went to my favourite trailhead with a thermos full of coffee and made the same slog uphill and back down again. Along the way I started to meet the trees. I noticed how the fungi changed day to day. I closed my eyes and gave the birds my full attention. Since then, my call to creative work has become louder. In the spring of 2023, I was no longer able to ignore that call, so now I am giving to it both power and time.

Today, I am inspired by the forests, farms, and coastlines of the Sunshine Coast, their diverse ecosystems, and all the species that inhabit them. My work aims to express reverence through careful observation.