About Melissa Messer
Bio
Melissa Messer’s figure paintings look closely at the vanishing point where interiority and intimacy collide. These works create a narrative with color itself, establishing visual weight and atmosphere by pairing sculptural form with finely tuned color relationships. A student of classical art and modern design, Messer references the weight and solidity of antique sculpture to prod the illusion of stability. Messer paints the people in her life, collaborating with her subjects to depict the somatics of lived experiences in motherhood, womanhood, friendship and intimacy, locating the teetering moment when one gesture becomes another. She paints in oil, often starting with a warm yellow underpainting in the fashion of illuminated manuscripts and then weaving the abstract shapes of color that compose her subjects overtop. In Messer’s images, transition is a steady state. Her figures depict a moment of physical consideration - to dive in or back out, kneel down or get up, lean in or untangle.
Melissa Messer (b. 1984) is a graduate of University of Texas at Austin (MA Design, 2012) and The Aristides Classical Painting Atelier Seattle (2018). In 2019 she joined a Summer Fellowship at The International Center for the Study of Painting outside of Rome. There she encountered the ancient Roman wall painters’ palette which she obsessively studied, collecting samples of ancient pigments and modernizing the palette for her current work. Italy also gave her the language of antique sculpture which is evident in her approach to figure painting today. Melissa lives in Seattle with her family and is currently working on a solo show for Fall 2026.
Exhibitions
Future
Sept 2026 - Solo show at Spectrum Fine Art, Seattle
Recent
July 2025 - Close Ties solo exhibition for Upstate Art Weekend at Weird Specialty, Tivoli, NY
Jun 2025 - Cherry Picked, group show at Spectrum Fine Art, Seattle
Oct 2024 - Form over Function, group show at Seattle Art Source, Seattle
July 2024 - Seattle Art Fair represented by Spectrum Fine Art, Seattle
CV available upon request.
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