Yaddo A, 2005

Melissa Meyer  

Melissa Meyer is an American artist, she specializes in engraving and abstract painting. She lives and works in New York. The artist studied art at New York University, where she obtained her bachelors degree and masters in 1975. She received several grants and scholarships, especially the grant from the Pollock-Krasner foundation. She taught at the Design School in Rhode Island, at the Chicago Art Institute and the Visual art school in New York.

She is inspired by colors, a brand or just a gesture, she also draws inspiration from her dreams or through her works. She is part of the third generation of abstract expressionists. Besides for her aesthetic influences, Meyer also draws inspiration from dance (mainly Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in the Band Wagon!), architectural forms, letters and manuscript writing, classic jazz and blues, black movies and several characters from songs and places...

Melissa Meyer creates plural work, this includes oil painting, drawings, watercolors, engraving and major public orders. Her work is strongly influenced by colors and lines. Her brush strokes and patterns are like a glyph, conveying an energetically aesthetic language which is extremely personal. Often when she works, she looks at her images in a mirror to see it reversed. Meyer has an expertise over a range of printing techniques, this includes lithography, etching, silkscreen painting...Her energetic and colorful compositions express emotions and the ephemeral essence of reality.

In 2014, Peter Frank wrote about Melissa Meyer in Huffington Post: "Each of her paintings or watercolor works is a challenge for Meyer, as she wants to compose light work which is very different, all the while revealing the DNA which is common to all her works".

Melissa Meyer has exhibited several times in USA and abroad. She handles public orders all around the world, including Kirghistan, Shanghai, Tokyo, Miami...Meyer's work are present in the permanent collection of some prestigious institutions of the world, including MOMA in New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R museum. Guggenheim, Brooklyn Museum … Her work is also present in several companies, these include (Estée Lauder, Johnson & Johnson, Hallmark Cards, IBM and Neiman Marcus…).