Melisa Taylor Metzger

At Sea Between Fossils and Satellites

2019

In Melisa Taylor’s work, the natural world acts as blueprint while ideas are sourced from historical art and contemporary culture. She pursued studies in Marine Biology before training in 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; various instruments and electric tools are used out-of-context to inject unpredictability in the painting gesture. She has assimilated in her practice an eclectic multilayering process combining pyrography, sanding and detailed stencil compositions on wood. Wabi-sabi -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. Her work has been exhibited internationally and acquired in private and corporate collections across North America and abroad.