About The Artist:
Melia initiated her artistic activity at a very young age. A Tampa native, Melia moved to Greenville, SC, studied under several artists, and worked in the artistic community before returning to call Tampa home. Inspired by both classic and modern painters like Caravaggio, Egon Schiegle and Warhol, she captures the ambiguity of life with passion as she exuberantly fills the canvas with rhythmic brush strokes, giving a sensuous quality to the paintings. The style is unique and painterly, loose and edgy. Though they are painted in semi-abstract style, the subject in a composition is always real; Ordinary characters that represent life’s ardor - a starry-eyed moment, a stolen glance, a desolate walk on the edge. Her work is simple, expressive, passionate, and it always presents a positive point of view. Melia has been selling paintings to enthusiastic collectors from South Carolina to Florida. Her works are included in many notable private and corporate collections.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
"The more I search for inspiration in my artwork, the more that I find my true nature is revealed; sometimes peculiar, more often oneiric and optimistic. I am coming to find out that before I can paint an abstract interpretation I must first understand the reality of the subject, and then I may begin to detract from it. It is the ambiguity I want to convey. It is what the eye cannot see that the mind is forced to observe."
