Collection: Meredith Raiford Akins

Meredith is a Georgia native, originally from Vidalia and now living in Athens with her husband Alex and cat Yonah. She graduated from the University of Georgia with a B.F.A. in painting in 2015. After leaving UGA, Meredith traveled the world for a year painting murals as missions in Mozambique, Peru, Colombia and Jamaica. This experience altered the way she approached both art and life. 

Her latest body of work, “From Antiquity”, is largely inspired by first century Roman art and the murals found in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. She loves the depth of color and subject matter that these artists utilized two thousand years ago. She also finds it deeply fascinating that the same event that caused the destruction of the cities these works inhabited is also the agent that preserved them like a time capsule all these years. We tend to view paintings of flowers and fruit as light and frivolous, but these flowers have endured volcanoes and millennia, and have still somehow maintained their strength and beauty. That’s something worth celebrating.