Behind the scenes of Occasionette, the newest gift shop on the Hill, Stephen Megargee performs all the duties of an efficient store manager. But when he’s not making sure that the store runs smoothly, he is a working artist whose graphic designs have been featured on the concert tours of some of music’s biggest stars.

“I was in my twenties, single and being paid to design graphics while getting great concert seats and going backstage to meet Michael Jackson, Prince, David Bowie and Neil Young.”

During a decades-long career, Margaree has designed T-shirts, skateboards and Swatches, but an early foray into portraiture has led to a thriving career in the genre, capturing not only the model’s appearance, but also an internal quality he calls “the divinity of the subject.” 

Megaree started drawing when he was six years old. An older brother “with loads of artistic talent” inspired him while the siblings were growing up in Ocean City, N.J.

“But it was my high school art teacher who really opened my eyes,” Margaree said. “He taught me how to draw portraits and achieve a compelling image.” In the mid-1970s, Megargee worked as manager of Accent Gallery in Ocean City but his big breakthrough occurred almost by accident. 

“I had been a fan of ballet since I was a child and first saw ‘The Nutcracker' at Lincoln Center,” Megargee said. “The New Jersey Ballet was coming to Ocean City and I saw that their advertising was really inadequate. On my own, I came up with a whole marketing campaign.”

Megaree designed T-shirts, a poster, a program book and ads which he took to the Ocean City Art Center which was sponsoring the performance. Megargee’s designs were so captivating that a local T-shirt printer hired him. 

“Within a year, I had my own line of graphics for the skateboard and surfing crowd,” he said. Before long, he was designing for Swatch, the Swiss company whose namesake watch became an accessory craze in the late 80s and early 90s. He also worked for one of the world's largest merchandisers of rock tour graphics. Early success as a graphic designer eventually led Megargee to work as art and creative director at several Philadelphia agencies while earning a degree in corporate communications. 

From graphic design to portraits

In 1988, Megargee’s former high school teacher asked if he still did portraits. “He offered me a commission, so I did a pastel of a bank vice president and things just took off,” said Megargee who has lived in Chestnut Hill for over thirty years with his wife, Stephanie Kasten, who is the head of the foreign language department at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, and the couple’s two children. 

“My first effort was a portrait of my eldest daughter with a bow in her hair,” Megargee said. 

Working in pastel, sepia tone or oil on canvas, Megargee achieves compelling portraits of children, adults and pets. He has experimented with a unique type of portraiture in which the subject faded into the paper itself, but strives to “not let any technique become more noticeable than the person. The artist also has a category of work he calls, Women Who Lead. Among his most admired portraits is one he did in 2018 of Priscilla Sands, former president of SCH. 

“At the unveiling of the portrait, the daughter of the head of school at Agnes Irwin told me that Nelson Shanks had done her mother’s portrait, but that I did a much better job of capturing Sands’ spirit,” Megargee said. “It was the most profound compliment I ever received because I hold Shanks in highest regard.”

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