Constellation Drawings

Melanie has been commissioned to draw a series of illustrations of the constellations for the upcoming Starlight Software V.2.  This ongoing project is a collaboration of her drawings with astrologer/author Bernadette Brady’s  years of research.  The following is an abstract for Melanie’s presentation at the Heavenly Discourses conference in Bristol University, Bristol, UK.

Illustrated Sky: Contemporary Depictions of the Classical Constellations

This is an image-driven presentation of a journey into celestial cartography and mythology.  The project unites the fields of cultural astronomy and art and is a collaborative endeavour with Bernadette Brady (The University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, U.K.). It investigates how one can represent, through cartography, the mythological vibrancy contained within the literature of the classical western images of the constellations. Thus it considers these classical constellations both through celestial cartography and their mythological background, and seeks to emblematize this in contemporary aesthetics. This lecture presents the artist’s methodology and journey of this ongoing project.

The Growth Experiment

The Growth Experiment -  explores time and movement through paintings of plant growth, specifically vegetables.  Melanie begins with a young plant and a simple painting, and continue to paint the same plant as it grows over days and months, adding new phases of its growth to the original depiction. The end result is a complex, layered image that charts the surprisingly erratic life and movement of the subject.  Her work invites the viewer to contemplate the fragility of a moment in time and its effect on the whole.

These paintings voice not just the traditional considerations of aesthetics, such as form and color, but more introspective and universal social issues.  Melanie explores cycles of kinesis and stasis, patterns of growth and change, and meditations on vulnerability and the passage of time.  These are subtle but important tools for both personal and social awareness.