Melissa McCutcheon is an oil painter based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting from Washington University in St. Louis in 1999. Melissa's work has been featured in over 60 national and international exhibitions.
Her paintings are an examination of the sense of identity associated with displacement and its relationship to one's cultural and sociopolital context. Each painting consists of an abstracted landscape that symbolizes the memory of the landscapes she has traveled throughout developing nations in the Caribbean and Eastern Europe over the past 12 years. Within each painting the landscape serves as an intentionally non-specific environmental context for the figurative element. The people Melissa has interacted with as a traveler within these developing nations inspire the choice of figure in each painting. Concurrently, the figure functions as a metaphor; specifically changing within each painting to represent the different emotions associated with displacement. Once the painting is completed, there is a sense of the figure being at one and at odds with its context; a feeling of displacement and yet belonging all at once. This tension exists within each painting as it does within the actual experience it is based on.
Her paintings are an examination of the sense of identity associated with displacement and its relationship to one's cultural and sociopolital context. Each painting consists of an abstracted landscape that symbolizes the memory of the landscapes she has traveled throughout developing nations in the Caribbean and Eastern Europe over the past 12 years. Within each painting the landscape serves as an intentionally non-specific environmental context for the figurative element. The people Melissa has interacted with as a traveler within these developing nations inspire the choice of figure in each painting. Concurrently, the figure functions as a metaphor; specifically changing within each painting to represent the different emotions associated with displacement. Once the painting is completed, there is a sense of the figure being at one and at odds with its context; a feeling of displacement and yet belonging all at once. This tension exists within each painting as it does within the actual experience it is based on.
