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Melissa PolhamusVirginia (born 1957) Melissa Polhamus was born in Ludwigsburg, Germany. She is the adopted daughter of a U.S. military career serviceman and his wife. Melissa grew up in several different American towns as a result of her father’s transfers to various East Coast military bases during her childhood. In 1989, she began to draw from her own imagination while recuperating from depression suffered in the wake of an automobile accident. Shortly thereafter she began to immerse herself in her art. By then she had accumulated a broad range of experience in her personal and professional life. She has since been sporadically employed. Nonetheless, Polhamus is self-taught as an artist. Her incongruously bright-colored linear drawings are characterized by marked obsessiveness and intense psychological distress. She has described the process of creating these works as entirely spontaneous and intuitive. The compositions are usually overloaded and intricately fragmented. Her drawings have a dreamlike and often nightmarish narrative quality in which, convoluted environments are typically inhabited by cartoonish clothed figures as they carry out activities that are alternately mundane, mysterious, or sinister. Through a labyrinth of interconnected chambers, corridors, stairways and networks, entities subtly transform from one action to the next. The bizarre activities that she depicts, as well as the myriad symbolically resonant details in her drawings, invite psychological analyses that present their own particular challenges. Her drawings often include peculiar vehicles, weaponry, musical instruments, stylized vegetation and jaggedly geometric patterns that contribute to a pervasive sense of anxiety. They are mysteriously compelling and consistently original in style. Tom Patterson Melissa’s work was recently included in the prestigious INSITA triennial exhibition in Bratislava, Slovakia. Her work has also been exhibited at The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, VA as well at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, MD. The narrative aspect of her work is an unusual quality for a liminal or “Singulier” artist.
Creative Heart Gallery |
To purchase art, please note the artist and the artwork name and email us at george@self-taughtart.com or call us at (401)847-0991. Visa, Mastercard, and Amex accepted. Click on images for a larger view. |
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Melissa Polhamus "The King" 1998 23 x 30 $3,500 |
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Melissa Polhamus "The Proprietor" 1998 15 x 17 22 x 23 frame $1,500 |
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Melissa Polhamus "Time Again" 1995 12 x 12 $1,500 exhibited: INSITA 2004, The Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia |
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Melissa Polhamus "The Slayer" 1998 11 x 15 17 x 21 frame $1,500 exhibited: High on Life, American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore |
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Melissa Polhamus "The Offering" 1998 15 x 11 22 x 18 frame $1,400 |
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Melissa Polhamus "The Prisoner" 1994 10 x 13 18 x 20 frame $1,200 |
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Melissa Polhamus "The Pinwheelers" 1994 11 x 11 19 x 19 frame $1,000 |
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