Melissa Stephens

 

Member profile details

First name
Melissa
Last name
Stephens
State
CA
Country
US
Occupation
Artist & Encaustic Painting Instructor
Volunteer Interests
NorCAL Wax President, President & Social Media Chair at Valley Art Gallery, Memberships & Chapters Chair for IEA, East Bay Open Studios Board, creator of Hope Lives: Art for ALS annual exhibitions, encaustic painting instructor, exhibitions, speaker
Chapter Affiliation
NorCal Wax - San Francisco Bay area
Picture
Artist Statement
I love to educate my viewers about the encaustic medium while discovering how my visual interpretations resonate with them. My mission is to create accessibility to the arts, so I feel that my art is never truly complete until it has been shared.

My paintings are heartfelt abstractions set to real life experiences. They are my visual responses to stories that I hear, or reactions to my experiences. Intimate stories are layered in my paintings leaving room for reflection and introspection.

Hope, gratitude, mindfulness and soul-searching are guiding forces as I paint. I aim to be ever-present to these practices and attitudes in life as well as when creating my artwork.

Many of my layers are lined with hand-written text, letters to myself, diary entries or asemic writing. Asemic writing is a freeform way of creating images of text without the use of language. These scrawled out passages aren’t always straight forward messages to my viewers. They are an expression of my deepest feelings.
Instagram name (if none, type "none")
melissa_stephens1016
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