Melissa Chandon considers herself to be an abstract realist. Among her greatest influences she cites the Bay Area Figurative painters, specifically Richard Diebenkorn. Ms. Chandon feels strongly had it not been for her friend and mentor Professor Wayne Thiebaud of the University of California, Davis, she would not be the painter she is today. Recently, recognized by Southwest Art Magazine as one of America's top ten artists to watch, Chandon's career has truly exploded. Melissa's oil paintings are rendered with a passionate physical language that evokes a deep felling of isolation and lonliness anidst the welcoming flat American landscapes and cityscapes. the intentional use of negative space via shape and shadow create an aura of solitude and privacy to which the viewer is slowly drawn into the environment. Focusing on the vanishing icons of time-past, these works document symbolic emblems slowly disappearing from our visual backdrop. There is another quality in Chandon's work that runs counter to the frozen moment time frame of her work. this is something you have to work a bit harder to find but like so much else in her work it is there in abundance and it is important to find. That is there is a reworking and reworking of her surfaces, her very forms, and she leaves traces of her earlier efforts just beneath her final resolution. See more of Mellisa Chandon's work on our website at http://www.sweeneyartca.com/
