Samantha Melvin

Lives and works in Austin, TX, USA

Artist statement

From the lens of a gardener and an artist, my work investigates the dynamics of landscape and space, where order and chaos intersect in our ever-evolving environment. The mixed-media languages of drawing, painting and printmaking speak visually about these environments where built structures merge with curved, organic geographies. Traces of humanity intersect with nature throughout. The interactions map the relationship between order and chaos in the complex adaptive system of the world in which we live. Having moved a lot as a child, I see constructed shelters as temporary. Instead, the spaces around us, the places where nature is a part, draw me in. Through layered abstractions and patterns, gestural conversations of color, light, and form explore materiality and the ecology of metamorphosis around us. My work celebrates the human and nature relationship, deconstructing the duality of chaos and order to demonstrate the multiple ways that they coexist. My abstracted contemporary landscapes expand on the vibrant interactions of color and pattern of the postmodern Pattern and Decoration Movement. Additionally, the philosophical concepts of difference and repetition (Deleuze, 1968), as repeated colors and shapes dance with one another forming varied outcomes, reflect nature’s ongoing, ever-adapting resilience. Serendipitously, the layering of translucent hues and pattern also creates the ephemeral effects of light and space. Nature provides me with an uplifting, colorful,...

Artwork