Lillie, Melissa Matsuki

Melissa Matsuki Lillie’s artwork references natural and manmade forms using a personal visual language of vibrant colors and complex layers to reflect the macroscopic and microscopic world. Her paintings evoke a sense of space that has been flattened and layered, revealing strands and structures of line and color interacting fluidly with hidden landscapes. Elusive reference points can often be discerned through the interwoven layers.

This current work shown is a departure from her typical paintings and collages. This work explores her representational relationship to nature and her animal awareness that has always been present throughout her life. Melissa owes a great deal of her upbringing and inspiration to her father who was a zoo keeper at the National Zoo in Washington DC for thirty years. Her experience there and seeing nature guided by the eyes of her father help form an intense and curious passion for all things living. This body work is the start of exploring her relationship to animal husbandry and our entwined relationship as human animals.

Originally from Maryland she now lives in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts.

She received her BFA in sculptural studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Exhibited in Good Purpose Gallery April 7, 2015 – May 18, 2015.