Melissa Herrington

Melissa Herrington

Venice, CA, United States

About Melissa Herrington

MELISSA HERRINGTON Inspired by the sea, travel, color and texture. Azure waves. Cloudless traveler lost in days of dream and birdsong float on turquoise seashells. Cuts polished catkins reflecting yellow, grasping leafy ribbons drift a washed rained pink. Herrington creates mixed media paintings that oscillate between the representational and the abstract. Using oil, acrylics, resin, and occasional found fibers, her paintings explore concepts emergence, layering, and life. Some pieces appear raw and stripped bare. Others evoke a visual field of depth and motion through nests of negative space. Images are subverted by erasures of solid fields of mostly tan or off white hues. Forms appear familiar—spheres, ribbons, knots, spider webs, tree branches, teardrops, eggs—but are put into new contexts as they settle amongst intricately rendered lines, delicate strands wrapping bodies and colors as though floating across the surface. Herrington paints suggestively. Objects and images are never too explicit, this “unfinished” fluidity, represents an unfolding of new possibilities. This increases their capacity to evoke a wide range of associations and recollections. As she fuses dream like meanings and delicate drawings. Her paintings utilize their own system of mark-making that gain meaning through crafted interruptions. Tension exists between background and foreground, between figures and signs. This tension hints at a coherent completion of form, but never permits full realization. The result is a contemporary visual portmanteau. Floating colors and unsteady shapes blend on the surface of spilling muted tones and marks are meticulously irregular appearing as though left unintentionally by a trace. These elements create a sense of a landscape:: a map:: a stain:: a ley line:: chronicling a girl’s journey. Herrington is inspred by her travels around the world. She has exhibited both nationaly and international and current lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Education:

EDUCATION MFA, OTIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN, 2008
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 
BFA, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY, 1997
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA

Events:

ARTIST IN RESIDENCY::
2012 LaSallian Internationa Artist In Residency, Tuscany, Italy
2010 CAMAC, Marnay sur Seine, France
2009 Sandberg Institute Fellowship, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, Holland
2006 Idyllwild Center For The Arts, Paintings Edge Residency, Idyllwild, California
2005-2001 Hambidge Center For The Creative Arts, Rabun Gap, Georgia
2002 Hungarian Multicultural Center, Budapest, Hungary

Exhibitions:

EXHIBITIONS::
2014 Daughter Of The Wind, Los Angeles, CA
2013 The Flame Closes That Empty Chasm Shut, Gallery DeNovo, Sun Valley, ID
2012 Ashes to Honey, M. Herrington Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2010 HANDless, Gallery DeNovo, Sun Valley, Idaho
2010 Veiled Vision, Gallery DeNovo, ArtChicago, Chicago, Illinois
2009 Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana
2008 Lighght, Gallery DeNovo, Sun Valley, Idaho
2008 Echoes of Sight, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California
2007 New Paintings, Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
2007 Shadow Memories, Gallery DeNovo, Sun Valley, Idaho
2006 Soul Sessions, Gallery DeNovo, Sun Valley, Idaho
2005 Long Shadows, Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
2004 Gifts of Passage, Gallery DeNovo, Sun Valley, Idaho
2004 Travel Stains, Association for Visual Artist, Chattanooga, Tennessee
2004 Sleep Stories With Separate Spheres, Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
2002 Budapest and Beyond, ArtFarm, Atlanta, Georgia
2002 New Works, Delta Technology Center, Atlanta, Georgia