“With the pressures of an increasingly urban existence I hope that my paintings will offer a more sympathetic relationship with our natural world, awakening sentiments of empathy and harmony with nature rather than one of discord and conflict.”
Melissa Egan
www.artegan.com.au
My latest body of work was largely inspired by my travels to Spain. The beautiful Gardens of Montjuic, the Majorcan coastline, Valencia and Torledo provide backdrops for my sumptuously clad muses to reenact their adventures.
My protagonists for this series include, Pepa and Christabel Blackman, plus an array of other friends, foes and animals encountered on my journeys. Christabel’s penchant for exotic culinary delights, renders her, “the Mean Paella Queen”, while Pepa, depicted as a “Lolita”, encompasses all that is beautiful and innocent. In the painting “Harvest”, Pepa is painted wearing a cornucopia gown of fruit and vegetables, accompanied by her guardians, a sheep and a cow. In other works, Goya and Velaquez inspired muses, don hats of trees or dresses of fish tied up with pearls.
Within these parameters I explore themes of friendship, loss and our relationship with nature, resulting in paintings that are both humorous and nostalgic. With the pressures of an increasingly urban existence I hope that my paintings will offer a more sympathetic relationship with our natural world, awakening sentiments of empathy and harmony with nature rather than one of discord and conflict. I live in rural Queensland, Australia. My studio overlooks a fruit orchard and is encircled by a vegetable garden and fishpond.
