Melissa Meyer

American Abstract Expressionist Artist Melissa Meyer Aquatint Etching

1984-1987

Melissa Meyer is an American abstract painter and printmaker who is associated with the third generation of Abstract Expressionists. Her energetic, colorful compositions express emotion and the transitory essence of reality. She lives and works in New York. Melissa Meyer has created a diverse oeuvre that includes oil paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints and large-scale public commissions. Her work is strongly influenced by color and line. Her brushstrokes and patterns possess a glyph-like quality, conveying a vibrant and deeply personal aesthetic language. Meyer is skilled in a range of different printing techniques, including lithography, etching, monotype, silkscreen, and spit bite aquatint. The work Meyer makes begins and ends with looking. Her inspiration could be spurred by seeing a color or a mark or a gesture, sometimes in a dream, sometimes in another one of her works.She works instinctively, and follows her personal intuition in the studio. In addition to her aesthetic influences Meyer is also inspired by dance, architectural forms, letterforms and handwriting, classic jazz and classic blues, film noir, and a multitude of specific characters, songs and places, which often find their way into her titles and concepts. Melissa Meyer has exhibited extensively throughout the United States, as well as internationally. She has completed public commissions around the world, including in Kyrgyzstan, Shanghai, Tokyo, Miami and Queens. Work by Meyer is included in the permanent collections of some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, including the New York MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, The Jewish Museum in New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.