Megan Williams has been teaching visual arts since the late 1980’s. She has taught life drawing in the Art Fundamentals program at Sheridan College, since 2001 and has been on faculty at the Toronto School of Art since 1988, offering courses in figurative drawing and painting, practical history of technique and the development of a personal creative voice. Administratively, she has served as Co-Director of the School and is a board member, assisting in program development and fundraising over the years. Megan taught drawing and painting courses at Ontario College of Art in the late 1980's.

Megan also works as a teacher and trainer for a literacy organization that works with high-risk families through the oral tradition. Since 1995, she teaches a weekly program and trains teachers in French and English across the country from the Yukon to the Gaspé. She has been a storyteller at the Listen Up Storytelling Festival, in museums, schools, libraries and a castle.

In the 1980's, Megan worked as a cartographer in Egypt for 3 field seasons, for the Wadi Tumelat project, Near Eastern Studies Dept., University of Toronto as well as in the lab in Toronto. 

Megan grew up as a bilingual Montrealer and loves languages. Parla un po' d'italiano and her Arabic is shwoya shwoya. She has two beloved daughters in their twenties.

  

 

Awards and Publications

  • Recipient of two Greenshields grants
  • Published author of Dans Le Creux De Ma Main - A book of francophone rhymes and songs collected from Canadian families from coast to coast while giving teacher training workshops for the Parent/Child Mother Goose Program

 

Education

  • AOCA Diploma 1980 including off-campus year in Florence led by Tom Lapierre
  • OCA Post Graduate Independent Study Year 1981

 

Part Time Education (1981-86) 

  • Ryerson University: Surveying & Cartography
  • Cornell University: Measured Drawing for Archeology - Rome, Italy
  • Rhode Island School of Design:  Measured Drawing as Above (Joint-Program) 
  • St. Martin’s School of Art, London, U.K.: Figure Drawing and Printmaking

Life drawing classes can involve learning many small skills over time but some things can be learned in one lesson that make a difference to your work right away. Here is one.

 

Testimonials

“I first encountered Megan Williams when she taught life drawing at Toronto School of Art. Her classes were so lively, engaging, original and fun, that I barely noticed that I was learning a great deal of the discipline of looking and the techniques of drawing.

Her brilliance as an educator was also evident in her Image Development class. The course was a series of carefully thought out, evolving exercises designed to help students discover their creative ideas and translate them into a body of images. The inventiveness and conceptual rigour, combined with the nurturing support of our nascent talent, made this one of the finest and most memorable courses I’ve ever taken.

Writing as someone with four postsecondary degrees who is also a lifelong learner, I can unequivocally say that I have met very, very few teachers with Megan’s pedagogical sophistication and ability to create a happy learning environment. “

Robin Pacific, PhD, MTS
Artist and activist
www.robinpacific.ca





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