Melissa Meyer is a lyrical abstractionist. She paints free-floating, painterly ribbons of vibrant colors and shapes. She draws with paint. Lance Esplund has described her work as having a “fusion of line and ground…creating an interplay in which linear movements become spatial arabesques. …dancing, knotted webs of bright color and line, struggle between openness and restraint, air and solid. Their imminent frontality is buoyant and percussive, somewhere between a wall of water and a wall of fire.” (1)
Meyer was born New York in 1946, and received both a BS and an MA from New York University. Her lengthy exhibition history includes solo exhibitions at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York; Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York; Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, Ohio; Holly Solomon Gallery, New York and Galerie Renee Ziegler, Zurich, Switzerland.
Meyer has completed public commissions in New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Bishkek US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan. Her work is included in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum and many other public and private collections across the United States. Meyer was awarded a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock Krasner Foundation and a fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation. She is a frequent artist in residence at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York as well as at the Vermont Studio Center.
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(1) Esplund, Lance. "The Lighthearted Abstract Expressionist," The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 21, 2009.