Melisa Taylor

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, Hous...

Advance Training
2000-2002 / Old Masters Painting with Paul Chizik of Vancouver Art Academy, BC, Canada
2002 / Traditional Painting, KUC, BC, Canada
1997-2000 Marine Biology, UBC
1994-1995/Arts Plastique, Cégep de Ste-Foy, Qc, Canada

Projects
2024
Austin AAF with Stella Ripley
2019
December - SCOPE MIAMI BEACH
Septembre - The Other Fair Dallas, solo show
August - MILKY WAY OVER MANI-UTENAM, group show curated by Melisa Taylor Metzger, Qc, Canada
July - GÉMEAUX DE MINUIT, group show curated by Melisa Taylor Metzger, Stella Ripley, Qc, Canada​
June - BAYOUS, duo-show with invited artists Olivier De Serres/François Labroche, curated by Melisa Taylor Metzger, Stella Ripley, Qc, Canada
May - CONNECTIVE TISSUES, group show curated by Melisa Taylor Metzger, Stella Ripley, Qc, Canada ​
May - Every Woman Biennial, NYC, USA
2018 / December - Aqua Art Miami, Stella Ripley, Miami, Florida, USA
2018 / Fall Group show, Galerie Michel Guimont, Quebec, Qc, Canada
2018 / October - Texas Contemporary Art Fair, gallery Stella Ripley, Houston, Texas, USA
2018 / June FAAQ, curator Marc-Antoine Phaneuf, Qc, PQ, Canada
2017 AAF Hamburg with KplusY (Paris), Germany
2017 AAF Amsterdam with KplusY (Paris), Netherlands
2017 AAF Battersea with KplusY (Paris), UK
2017 AAFNYC with KplusY (Paris), NY, USA
2017 TOAF Brooklyn, November, NYC, USA
2017 "Gesture" - Duo at R:C, June, Toronto, Canada
2017 The Other Art Fair NYC, June, Brooklyn, USA
2017 AAFNYC with Reference Contemporary, NYC, US...