Melissa Chaney

I have been making paintings using stories from Greek myth and drama evocative of loss, alienation and the personal consequences of war. My intention is not to illustrate the stories, but to create metaphysical counterparts to them. The paintings are composed with the world as a stage. The baroque spatial devices invite the viewer in to an illusionistic reality; the scruffy, dissolving representational quality draws attention to the painting as an artificial construct. The act of painting becomes metaphor for the collision of reality and the imagination, combining the sensate effect of materials with the act of the mind.







Demeter's View, oil on canvas, 60" x 80"