She graduated at 50. Now this mother of six is a professional artist helping emerging creatives get their start

At Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Di Meglio’s creativity — flashes of which had permeated her childhood — took root and flourished.

But it didn't happen overnight.

“When you’re from a different generation than your classmates, it’s not always easy to acclimate and make friends. There was some ageism there, which I’ve also had to face as an older, emerging artist. But overall, the environment at Concordia was transformative and challenged me in the best way.”

As an arts educator who worked with adults and children at a community centre in the Montreal suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Di Meglio initially saw teaching as her path.

It was her second major in the faculty’s Painting and Drawing program — completed after Di Meglio took two years off to care for her mother after a cancer diagnosis — that proved formative, however.

“I didn’t necessarily see myself as an ‘artist,’ so to speak, when I started at Concordia,” she says. “I had established a program for kids with special needs at the community centre where I taught and thought that was my future. But then one of my instructors said bluntly, ‘No, you’re a painter. You need to create.’”

Empowered with new purpose, Di Meglio did just that, rigorously developing her personal expression over time. There were occasional clashes, she says — her professors’ and fellow students’ ideas didn’t always accord with her own — but Di Meglio held firm. She graduated with top marks in 2021 at the age of 50.

“After second-guessing myself for a while, I finally decided to just be free,” she says. “To just create what’s in my mind, without trying to please anyone other than myself. It took time and wasn’t easy, but following my instincts has paid off.”

To explore Di Meglio’s studio is to understand why. The sunlit space includes in-progress and finished canvases — including a series inspired by a field school stint Di Meglio did in Jerusalem as a student — a vintage printmaking machine, rows of neatly-organized materials and a lounge.

‘I decided to build something for emerging artists’

Di Meglio, who works two days a week as an assistant director at Gallerie Lacerte art contemporain, garners plenty of interest from buyers in Montreal and, thanks in part to the endorsement of her former professor, Leopold Plotek, is represented in Toronto by the Corkin Gallery.

Her current practice is partly focused on an innovation she’s developed with support from a Canada Council for the Arts grant.

“I’m working on a technique for canvases, using papier-mâché to create these undulating, wave-like textures that I then paint over after the surface has completely dried. It took two years to get the formula right.”

Just down the hall from Di Meglio’s studio are two massive spaces that she rents out to other artists, some of them Concordia alumni. The vast, high-ceilinged ateliers are subdivided into 17 intimate studios where emerging creatives pursue their chosen media, whether it’s pencil drawing, painting, ceramics or sculpture.

“I’m very grateful to Rosi to have access to a space like this,” says Li Zhou, BFA 23. “It’s allowed me to concentrate on building up my portfolio to eventually apply for my master’s. I’ve also made a friend here! She works just across from me.”

In facilitating the creative journeys of other artists, many half her age, does Di Meglio feel like she’s taken on a traditional caregiving role again?

She smiles at the suggestion.

“The first studio I worked out of was a space with about eight other people,” she says. “There was no privacy and I didn’t feel safe. So when I got established in my own studio, I decided to build something for emerging artists that was in line with what I needed when I was starting out.”

Aside from developing the project that the Canada Council for the Arts has helped fund, Di Meglio has plans to continue her studies and pursue a graduate degree, perhaps at Concordia or at another university in Canada or the United States.

“Creating has allowed me to work through a lot of pain and trauma, and helped me become a better, freer version of myself,” she says. “And it’s helped me confront my fears, too. So I’m excited about the future. I’m not done learning and growing, not by a longshot.”