Shadow Painting

Melissa Hartley (1996) London-based British abstract painter and muralist graduated from Central Saint Martins in BA Fine Art 2019. She works primarily with paint while initially interpreting her surroundings with the use of photography. Her interest in the surface of the modern city and the kind of colours it generates informs and inspires the compositions of her work. She focuses on architectural forms and shapes while capturing ephemeral moments that others could overlook. Each body of work offers a distinct colour palette based on actual geographic locations and acts as a way of restoring these moments in new abstracting ways. She paints to portray emotions through a visual sense, typically using colour as a means to control the energy and direct the eye. Within her work paint is formulated through symmetry and kaleidoscopic forms using precision and balance. Even though she focuses on fragmented, sharp shapes, they are expressed in a meditative way, using a systematic and repetitive process. Melissa distils geometric abstraction that explores the relationships between space, shape, colour and light. While blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture, she describes her work as bold yet ethereal.