Melissa Herrington
Melissa Herrington is an abstract contemporary artist, based in Los Angeles, whose work is evidence of her love of color, shape, and texture. Her large-scale, gestural paintings are built up through layers of paint on canvas and overlaid with graphite, charcoal and pigment. Herrington’s spontaneous, gestural marks dance on the canvas, while her subtle female forms ground her compositions. Layers play a pivotal role in the construction of Herrington's practice.
At the essence of Herrington's artistic practice lies an unmistakable relationship between distilled color and form. Standing before a singular canvas from her series, viewers are immediately captivated by a strong and powerful presence. Painterly veils and swathes of solid color, paused mid-flow, create a delicate tension in the balance of figure and ground. As contoured shapes emerge from the abstract
Melissa Herrington, will be exhibiting eight new large abstract paintings at Intersect Palm Springs Art and Design.These recent works blur the lines between mediums, forms, and concept. She is known for investigating the ever-changing nature of the female form through abstraction.
These new paintings are like clouded midnight skies, beauty bruised in hues of blue, purple and black. Continuous marks seem to bleed into the watered canvas. Conjuring a feeling of floating in a vast sea of mystery, shades of the night convey a sense of boundlessness, suggesting an infinite expanse. There is no physical boundary – no wall, no border, no fence around the edges of this cosmos. Herrington’s silhouetted figures evolve in a cosmological horizon. These contoured shapes are often scaled to her own body or surrounding environments, tempting the viewer to engage or simply float along side them.
“There is no edged thing in all this night...” ~ Dorthy Parker
The notion of being "no edged thing" aligns with the idea that the female form, as depicted in Herrington's paintings, is not confined or limited by rigid definitions. Instead, it suggests a fluid and open-ended interpretation, allowing for a more expansive and unrestrained exploration of beauty and identity. Melissa Herrington's work, invites viewers to engage with her art on a level that goes beyond the visual and delves into something deeper.
