Jacqui Melman
"Within the confines of rationality, our thought processes lack the expression of our inner soul, only to be liberated by the subconscious." - Jacqui Melman
New Jersey based artist Jacqui Melman's work is informed by her early study of color theory at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her formal training continued at the State Univdersity of New York at Albany where she received a BFA and further developed her unique sense of color and abstraction. Melman's modernistic style, carefully blending intensity, an inherent sexuality, and a divine sense of humor , has afforded her great recognition.
After studying stone carving for many years under the tutelage of renowned artist Elaine Warshaw, Melman has launched her own school for aspiring sculptors in Manalapan New Jersey.
Melman feels that each piece in her collection is nurtured more towards an overall fluidity of emotion than with an exactness of technique. Her art is created to capture inner emotions. She allows each medium to 4express its own personality. Her primary aspiration is for recognition for her artistic language.
Featured in The Encyclopedia of Living Artists, Instruments epitomizes Melman's middle period when vast explosions of color offset common items whose scale has been manipulated to heighten a sense of distorted reality.
Surrender highlights the undercurrent of sexuality that permeates much of Melman's work.
Unlike her paintings, Melman's stonework is seeped in realism as can be seen woman carved out of grey alabaster.
While much of Melman's work is influenced by cubists like Max Weber and Georges Braque, Family brings forth influences of the post-impressionists. One would be hard pressed not to notice the nod to Van Gogh's Starry Night.
The explosive use of color enhances the sense of intensity emitted by the subject matter. One wonders if the absence of facial features is a last vestige of modesty or a suggestion of universality.
Marc Chagal can be included among Melman's many influences as is demonstrated in her later work, Palomino.
This early piece was Melman's first exploration of the oversized canvas. Many of her later hallmarks find their origination in Brain Tumor such as gaining movement through the use of fibrous objects, and sexual overtones. One might see a Georgia O-Keefe influence here.
Inspired by modernism and the stonework of Jose De Creef, Melman's stonework is more classical in it's elements than her work in other media.
Tangerine show's Melman first starting to explore some of the elements that would come to wider use later on.