Nathan Shepard was born in New Hampshire in 1966. Both of his parents were artists who encouraged him to draw and paint from an early age. He later studied oil painting, sculpture and art history at Bradford College and The Museum School, Boston.
Nathan discovered a love for mural painting in 1996, inspired by artists such as Diego Rivera, Thomas Hart Benton, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and his own father, Robert Shepard. The first of many trips to Mexico in the early 1990's resulted in a period at the Instituto Allende, Guanajuato, to further his study of mural painting. He spent a winter painting at the Vermont Studio Center and has studied plein air with Caleb Stone during multiple trips to Monhegan Island, Maine.
Nathan’s commissioned murals have been found in restaurants in Chiapas, farmstands on Martha’s Vineyard, on a New Mexican main street, as well as in private collections. In 2016, he contributed a mural for Whatever the Outcome, an innovative arts organization on Martha’s Vineyard focused on supporting education. Most recently Nathan’s work was featured in a summer show at the Canal Street Art Gallery in Bellows Falls, Vermont.
In addition to murals, Nathan paints landscapes and still life in gouache and oil. Whether it is the juniper-covered hills of New Mexico, the dramatic coastline of his ancestors’ home at Manchester-by-the-Sea, the vibrancy of Mexico, the fullness of fruit in a bowl or flowers in a vase, or the seascapes of Maine or Martha's Vineyard, Nathan always aims to explore the underlying spirit, history and nature of a scene or place.
After thirty years on the Vineyard, Nathan moved to Vermont in 2018 where he is inspired by the way sunlight and shadow model treelines, barns and metal roof slopes. He currently works from his home studio in Putney.
Megan Buchanan is a poet, dancemaker, organizer, and educator. Her poetry collection Clothesline Religion (Green Writers Press, 2017) was nominated for the 2018 Vermont Book Award. Find her work in Iterant, The Sun Magazine, Mom Egg Review, A Woman’s Thing, as well as numerous anthologies including Dream Closet: Meditations on Childhood Space (Secretary Press), Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry, and also Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (GWP), and the brand-new collection, The Path to Kindness, edited by James Crews. Her work was featured on public display at Art at the Kent in 2020 and is currently part of the collaborative poetry + land trust project, Writing the Land.
She’s currently researching and preparing for an upcoming performance residency at BMAC which will run from mid-October 2022 through January 2023 – a new iteration of a collaborative, interdisciplinary performance project about radioactivity, rivers/oceans, grief and love.
She’s grateful for past support from the Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Performance Lab, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
Born in Laguna Beach, California, Megan first came to New England as a teenager to attend Northfield Mount Hermon School. She moved to Vermont with her two children in 2010. She currently works at three area schools, supporting students with learning exceptionalities. Make contact at www.meganbuchanan.net.
