The artworks below are currently on display at Nashoba Valley Dental, located in Shirley, MA.
Melissa A. Richard
2022 Collection
by Melissa A. Richard
Artist Biography
Melissa is a New England artist, born and raised, and is currently working from her home studio in Southern New Hampshire. Melissa studied art at both the University of Massachusetts and the University of New Hampshire, graduating from the University of New Hampshire in 2000 with a degree in Studio Art. In 2012, Melissa enrolled in Boston University’s Masters of Art Education program, graduating with her Master’s degree in 2014.
Since she was a child, Melissa has taken an interest in both the arts and in working with young people. Melissa began working with children while still in high school and seriously pursuing art, receiving the Rhode Island School of Design Annual Student Artist Award her senior year. Throughout her career as an artist, Melissa has taught art privately, in museums and enrichment programs, as well as in the public school setting. Her dual careers as Artist-Teach have been symbiotic in nature and much of her work is focused on themes of Childhood and Memory.
Since the mid-2000s Melissa has been exhibiting work both locally in the New England area as well as nationally in live and online gallery shows. In 2016 Melissa had a solo exhibition “Lost and Found” at the Zephyr Gallery in Salem, MA, as well as a two-person show “Figuration Amalgam” at the Ayer Lofts Gallery in Lowell, MA. Melissa’s work is also on rotation at the Gallery Z in Providence, RI, and her work has graced the cover of local Indie Rock band Nemes’ April 2016 live studio album release.
The current collection of work showing at Gallery Sitka is primarily abstract mixed media that explore the emotional qualities of color and texture. Working from very small canvases, to gessoed paper, to larger canvases, Melissa interprets her inner voice about life, love and complex relationships into vivid layers of textured papers, acrylic paint, and oil pastel.
Tranquility (2022)
II started this painting shortly before I began my In Search of Peace series. One can see I was already working toward a particular color palette, as similar hues are echoed in my twelve paintings. When I started this work I did not yet know what direction I needed to go in my life to get well. The early stages of this painting showed a lot of desperation. It strongly reflected my struggle and frustration of looking for light and joy where the disease of my mind was obscuring it. I shelved this painting for the time being. Then in late 2021, early 2022 when I decided to put this show together I pulled it out again and resumed painting. After nearly two years I felt that I finally had found my way out of the dark. I wanted to show that. I felt that a self-portrait of some kind needed to emerge from the painting. I wanted to express my release from the grips of depression and reflect my new headspace and my attaining to some level of inner peace and tranquility. I feel like this work is the pinnacle of the show for me. Not only as the last work completed for the show, but as a representation of the end of this part of my journey; a picture of me in this moment.
Of me…. In Peace.
Garden of the Mind #1-6 (2021)
In late 2019 I was hospitalized for a severe episode of depression. I was in such emotional darkness, so tired, so emotionally exhausted that I didn’t think I could go on. During my first meeting with my medical team I had no words, only tears. I honestly don’t remember much of that first day, but I remember one thing my doctor said when they were leaving my room…my doctor pleaded with me that I “find the light”. That became the theme of my hospital journal during my stay, a standard psych unit issue black and white marble composition notebook which I filled with collage work, drawings and notes.
These six small works are created from some of the collage pages in my hospital journal. At first, my thought was to make one large artwork by making acrylic transfers of the pages, which I did in early 2020. The large piece I created never quite felt finished to me, however, and in 2021 I made the decision to cut it up and rework it in smaller separate images. What emerged as I reconfigured these, during the same time period I was creating my In Search of Peace reminded me of the idea of something I heard when I was in the hospital. On my last day at the hospital we had a group therapy session that encouraged us to “tend to the garden of our minds”. We discussed what this might mean, in effect weeding out the negative thoughts and planting what we want to grow, nurturing positive thoughts.
For me this series now represent what I want to grow in my mind’s garden: love, hope, beauty and peace.
In Search of Peace #1-12 (2020-21)
In Search of Peace #1-12, were created in the second half of 2020 through 2021 as a way for me to work through a lot of what I was experiencing internally. At that time I was desperately grasping for light in my life and fighting to emerge from a very deep depression. I was put in a position where I had no choice but to create some drastic new boundaries in my personal relationships and make other huge shifts in my life to heal and get well mentally. While this process eventually brought relief and new hope, it was fraught with obstacles and emotional upheaval. It was anything but easy, in many ways it was one of the most challenging things I have experienced. These twelve paintings really are my search for peace through that process and represent my mental and emotional metamorphosis through that difficult time.
The colors were chosen deliberately to appear calming, but there are still streaks of red-orange that abruptly break up the compositions. There are pencil and oil stick markings, scribbles, and scrapes, which create lines and boundaries or stumble across the canvases as if they are lost. The nature of the brushstrokes and movement of my tools as I worked hold all the emotions I was experiencing at the time. Like a channel from my mind and heart to the canvas. I see these as a visual diary of my journey of emotional healing.