Rift Valley, Sonde 16 Painting

Born 1977, Canada In Melisa Taylor’s work, the natural world acts as a blueprint while ideas are sourced from historical art and contemporary culture. She pursued studies in Marine Biology before training in the classical art of the Old Masters. She grew fascinated by the works of Flemish painters Vermeer and Rembrandt whose symbolic use of light influences her practice up to this day. Melisa explores the notion of the sublime through blur and precision. She develops an aesthetic of duality by hybridizing divergent approaches to art. Her studio practice is labor-intensive; commercial and electric tools are used to inject unpredictability into the painting gesture. She has assimilated to her visual language an eclectic multilayering process combining pyrography, sanding and detailed stencil compositions on wood. Embracing chance is a central idea in her work, equally so is meticulous control. This results in a subterranean tension that jeopardizes the ethereal appearance of her pieces; arbitrariness and mechanical execution fuse to create what she calls "systèmes faillibles" where spectral motifs seek to emerge out of obscuring lattices. Melisa's work has been shown internationally in Miami, Chicago, Tokyo, Seoul, Istanbul, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Grand Rapids, NYC, Singapore city, Los Angeles, Melbourne and Shanghai. Her work has been exhibited and acquired in private and corporate collections across North America, Europe and Asia.