When Meg Kaczyk worked as a creative director for a technological marketing agency, she used an approach that lifted those around her.

“There are different kinds of creative directors,” the Port Townsend artist said. “My style was to nurture the talent that I saw.”

That approach is reflected today in her work with students at Port Townsend School of the Arts.

Her goal, she said, is not to create a bunch of “mini-me’s,” but rather nurture and encourage those she instructs.

“I’m more interested in who they are and how I can bring them into their best talent, and their best selves,” she said.

Kaczyk is a member of Gallery 9 and on the faculty of the art school at Fort Worden. She and her husband relocated to Port Townsend from Portland in 2015.

“The culture, the community, the arts were impressive to us,” she said of why the small town met the criteria on her wish list.

And, of course, the natural beauty was also a draw, she said. “You can find natural beauty [in other places], but to find the synergy that Port Townsend has of culture and community is really lovely.”

SHOVEL ART

Kaczyk credits the support she herself received as a child as a main motivator in her continuing art.

“I think that unless you’re encouraged and seen as an artist, you might not keep going with it,” she said.

She recalled an instance in the second grade when a teacher walked by her desk, and, upon seeing the young Kaczyk’s work, exclaimed, “Hey, that’s good!” 

“I just took that on and said,  ‘She’s right!’” Kaczyk recollected. “I believed it.”

Her older brother, she noted, was also supportive. “It was the recognition and encouragement that kept me going.”

In high school, Kaczyk decided to try out a graphic design class, and discovered something that could help support her as an artist.

“It just clicked. I can actually provide for myself doing this,” she recalled.

She went on to study illustration and advertising at a small art school in Michigan, the Kendall School of Design. “From there I launched my career.”

She worked at small design firms and print shops before heading “out west” and getting a job at a company in Portland, where she worked her way up to the position of creative director. “I really loved it,” she said. “It was a really great career.”

During those career years, Kaczyk continued to make and exhibit her art, which developed from realistic to more abstract.

In the late 1990s, she moved onto paper cutting, and then was introduced to oil bars, which she compared to drawing, but with oils.

While in Portland, an opportunity arose for Kaczyk to paint a shovel to be used for a ground-breaking event.

Researching the right medium for this task led her to glossy latex enamel.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I love this paint!’” she said.

She started using it on paper and then moved on to boards and panels, creating larger pieces of art. Latex enamel is the medium she continues to use today.

PACIFIC MADRONE

Kaczyk’s work is thematic and series-driven. She’s created collections of flowers, of pomegranates, of birds, of her children growing up and, most recently, of madrone trees.

Learning to paint a series was a turning point in her artistic career, Kaczyk said. Before that, she remembered looking at Monet’s art and wondering, “How could he paint a haystack 16 times?”

Each time she painted another work in a series, Kaczyk would push herself. “How far can I take this and still have it be a pomegranate?” she asked herself when painting a series on that fruit. Kaczyk ended up with 30 versions of a pomegranate, each one more abstract.

“Realism is great, but I feel like abstraction shows more of that particular artist’s view,” she said, noting, “The role of the artist is to express [their] take on the world.”

One series she’s begun in Port Townsend depicts the Pacific madrone tree.

She’s fallen in love with the tree as she explores it within and outside her art. “They’re nowhere else, they’re so evocative of this place,” she said. “They all have such different personalities.”

There’s the matriarch, and the young trees. “And there’s a little bit of mystery, too.” For example, what makes them thrive?”

She mentioned one madrone that thrives behind the Safeway grocery store in Port Townsend, and another that’s not doing so well in a place that seems perfect.

So far, she’s started half a dozen madrone paintings, four of which are finished and on display at Gallery 9, along with other pieces of all sizes.

When Kaczyk reflects on the series she has painted over the years, reasons emerge for exploring the topics she did. A collection of still-life flower paintings she completed when she bought a house a number of years after being divorced, and was nesting into a new home life. “[Painting] a still life really makes sense.”

She painted her pomegranate series after her kids had grown older and she’d turned her house into an artist’s studio. “It was this fullness and emerging sense of self,” she said.

As for the new Pacific madrone series, she’s not quite sure what it represents for this stage of her life, “except for this new sense of place.”

SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

Kaczyk taught her debut class at Port Townsend School of the Arts in September 2017, followed by a six-week series in October and a weekly class in November. In 2018, so far, she’s set to teach a number of courses, ranging from “Paint Your Palate: Spin Your Art,” a collaboration with music collector Chuck Moses to “Reverse Ekphrastic: Your Visual Response” and “Papier-Mache for Grown-Ups.” She’s also teaching a course that addresses the topic “How do you go from inspiration to art?” (see classes listed at

ptschoolofthearts.org).

Kaczyk said she’s excited for the colorful year ahead and the art-rich environment that Fort Worden fosters. It’s also home to Centrum, Copper Canyon Press and the Port Townsend School of Woodworking. 

And if you attend one of her classes, she’ll be there to encourage your talent.

“What can you bring to the table?” she asks. “How can I help?”