About.
Thanks for visiting my website! I’m Melissa, an artist living in Beverly, Massachusetts
Like most artists, I’ve been drawing since I was a young child. Early on, I used to re-draw my favorite characters from storybooks or cartoons. In school growing up, I always loved my art classes or even any school project where I could include a hand drawn title page or a colored diagram. I liked pretty much anything design related. That being said, later in life when I first started college, I still wasn’t quite sure what my niche was. In 2009, I enrolled at the New Hampshire Institute of Art where I started in the illustration department. A couple years in, I realized that all my favorite classes were more fine art based. Specifically, I loved learning a more technical and realist approach to painting and drawing what I could see. Thus, I switched to the painting department. During these years, I really fell in love with oil painting, particularly painting the human figure.
After graduating with highest honors and receiving my BFA, I moved to Massachusetts. Though I’m not quite a full-time artist, I dedicate most of my week to painting and drawing. I’ve also had the amazing opportunity to take workshops with a few of my favorite contemporary artists, including Jordan Sokol, Jacob Collins, and Edward Minoff. These experiences helped provide me with a glimpse into the atelier approach to painting the figure and portrait. I can be a little bit of a perfectionist, so the academic and traditional style of painting really resonates with me. I am also a huge admirer of paintings and sculptures from the late 19th century. These classical paintings provide me with a lot of inspiration and drive to paint!
In 2019, I received an honorable mention in the figurative category of the Art Renewal Center’s Salon competition for my painting “Helios Passing”. This painting was then selected to be in their live salon exhibition which was held at the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) in Barcelona Spain, as well as in a virtual exhibition presented by Sotheby’s.
You can view all the artworks in the show in the digital catalog here! I’m on page 20.
I AM CURRENTLY FEATURED IN AN ARTICLE at REALISMTODAY.COM
