Private View : Tuesday 23 May, 6.30pm to 8.30pm - you are invited to join Melissa to celebrate ‘VIVID’
These intensely coloured expressionist paintings, exist as new and unique objects, untethered to objective reality. However, each mark is a trace of a movement in time, aiming for a playful sense of hide and seek, with forms appearing to float, zip and dance around each other through an unlimited space.
Melissa Says “I usually start without a preconceived idea of the finished work, and decisions about what to apply next are made in intuitively. The way I work involves a balance between chance, improvisation, and control, juxtaposing often strongly contrasting colours. These derive from the dazzling and seductive palette of the digital environment, as well as those attention-seeking pigments in the natural world, used as warnings, or to attract pollinators or prey.
Gesture is integral to my practice, and I have an experimental approach, using unconventional tools alongside brushes and palette knives. I work on a range of surfaces, from installation multiples of tiny five-by-five-centimetre paintings on angled blocks of pine, to larger works on wood panels, paper and canvas.
The complexity of microscopic worlds, images of vast galaxies outside our solar system, or rock patterns formed millions of years ago in a cliff face are the kinds of visual cues which inform my work. Although there is no intentional subject matter in most of my paintings, I think we are evolved to find meaning in things which seem random and incomprehensible, like seeing mythological gods in constellations of stars, or faces, creatures and objects in the clouds on a sunny day.
The titles are free associations sometimes sparked by visual elements which emerge as the paintings take shape. These titles can relate to subjects as diverse as biology, astronomy, culture, technology or politics, but my work is primarily an exploration of colour, and the material possibilities of oil paint. My main intention is to invite the viewer to immerse themselves in colour, and as with music, to experience a sense of imaginative freedom.”
The exhibition will run at Burdall's Yard from Tuesday 16 May to Saturday 24 June and is open to the public Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm.
