WestMelanie

About the Artist

Off and on for almost twenty years, Melanie was a professional photographer, first in Connecticut and then in California. Most of her professional work was architectural. Among other places, her work has been published in Architecture Magazine and Connecticut Magazine, and won an award from the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. Now, in Maine, Melanie has left the commercial end of photography, and has given her love of illustration and fine art photoillustration her full attention.

Over the years, Melanie has explored various forms of photography, from handcoloring black and white photographs, to digitizing and manipulating her images on a computer. Recently she has been exploring the potential of what is often called "Polar-Art". Using an old Polaroid SX-70 camera and Time Zero film, Melanie "smooshes" the image while it's still curing. Often, Melanie will manipulate the image even more in her computer. The resulting image has a dreamy illustrative look.

Melanie has been drawing most of her life. Recently she has been exploring pen and ink illustration, sometimes using photographs as foundations for her drawings. Her "Mandala Series" is a study of the meditative qualities of Mandalas. It began with drawing simple mazes to distract her mind from chronic pain. The mazes began to take on Mandala characteristics, which led Melanie to research the use of Mandalas by Tibetan monks and Navajo medicine men. Her Mandalas are often strong graphic, black and white images, symbolic in nature.

Melanie has also writen several short chapter books for children, and has illustrated her stories. Most of this work is done with pen, ink and color pencil.