Melissa grew up in Adelaide, inspired at an early age by her mother, a painter in oils and watercolours who had studied art in Melbourne. Both her parents encouraged in her a love of art and travel. Melissa studied as a Sculptor in South Australia’s School of Art before moving to Victoria to finish her Batchelor of Fine Arts at Monash University. She completed her Masters Degree of Creative Arts at James Cook university in Townsville in 2009.

Melissa has a strong passion for social justice and the environment. She has lived and worked in Mareeba over many years to support her arts practise and has held multiple solo and group exhibitions in the Far North Queensland region, interstate and overseas. She has curated cultural exchanges between Australian artists in the Far North and India and China. Her abstract work incorporates sculpture, collage, mixed media and painting.

Her art over the last five years has concentrated on nature closer to home, the myriad small worlds that mirror and connect with the larger environment. The challenges of bushfires, Covid, floods and life changes and disruptions has been a time for exploration of inner and outer landscapes providing new directions in her work.

Insight into Melissa’s creative process

1. THE TENSION

Art is a way of viewing and exploring the world and it is a journey where I respond to the small worlds, spaces and places that capture my attention, both the emotive and visual. There is always tension between letting the art flow in a state of play versus taking control of what I would logically like the art to say. A constant pull between head and heart seems to be a letting go that allows the art to naturally flow.

2. THE MATERIAL

Play is an important part in the use of materials and production of my art and I find the materials I use are generally whatever I feel responds to the concepts I’m trying to convey. I might use brushes, twigs, earth and any other media to create layers and textures because it is during experimenting that interesting effects often emerge.

3. THE BOUNDARY

I can recognise when I have overworked a piece of art but sometimes I will continue to work with it to create another level or two of textural layers. Going past that point of no return is a sense of having lost the flow of the work by over thinking which is difficult to define but the clarity is lost in the art.

4. THE TRAJECTORY

I am passionate about nature and conserving our natural environments. This theme continues in my work as I examine my external world and my emotional responses in a rapidly changing world.
I’m not sure where my art journey will take me but I believe that my work will continue to have a strong basis in the natural world and social justice issues.

5. THE AUDIENCE GAZE

Often with my work the titles are a clue as I incorporate my inner feelings and perspectives with my visual sightings on to the land as I transverse it.
The environment has bought me full circle to explore and examine myself more fully where my art is displaying my part of the dialogue to the audience. The audience will have their own interpretation of the conversation.