Title Info

Melissa Doherty

Painter

I’m interested in the concept of how we perceive landscape, and the idea of facade and artiface in landscaping. Instead of looking out at deep, ‘frontier’ space, largely found in the grand tradition of landscape painting, these paintings are about looking down at very shallow spaces. Contemporary landscape is no longer a vast frontier, but a limited material, manipulated by humans. These aerial views reflect a view of landscape and our position in relation to landscape. We are 'above' it, unconnected and distanced from it, changing and rearranging it. I think of each painting more as a still-life; a construction, or model.

These landscapes are, additionally, metaphors for desire, comfort, protection, isolation and facade.

Doherty presents scenes of destruction and order, of the re-organization of the natural, and shows us their bittersweet beauty.

      ----Andrew Wright.

Doherty offers us a simultaneous sense of comfort and isolation, prodding us to consider our expectations of and interventions with landscape.

      -----Crystal Mowry

Contact

Melissa Doherty
Studio # 3
Hours by Appointment

mdoherty@golden.net
www.melissadoherty.com