Melissa Herrington is a contemporary abstract artist currently living and working in Los Angeles, California. She has called Southern California home since 2005 where she received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. Prior to that, she spent most of her early career in Atlanta, Georgia and has a BFA from Florida State University. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Herrington creates large-scale, abstract paintings that are built up through layers of paint on canvas overlaid with mark-making using graphite, charcoal and pigments. Herrington’s Myths Words and Fire explores the complexities of transformation. Each work functions as both an individual entity and as a part of a larger theme of process. Herrington explores spontaneous marks and subtle forms through abstraction. Layers are fundamental to her imagery and process, infusing each work with multiple surfaces. Colors and unsteady shapes blend on the surface where irregular marks appear as though left unintentionally by a trace. Loosely sketched forms blend into whites and grays, contrasted by whole abstracted fields. These forms exist within the space of the painting; yet also allude to an outside source. At the heart of Herrington's artistic practice is an unmistakable relationship between distilled color and form. Standing before a singular canvas in this series, one is immediately drawn in by a strong and powerful presence, with painterly veils and swathes of solid color that are paused mid flow. There is a balance of figure and ground creating a powerful and delicate tension. As contoured shapes emerge from the abstract, the viewer is witness to form revealing, creating new visual possibilities, evoking a sense of joy and wonder.
