About

Robert Mellor’s paintings can be viewed as new propositions for visual enactment by the viewer, each work providing cues for engaging with the composition, layer by layer, edge by edge, line by line, color by color.  While it can be said that any work of art comes alive as art by a viewer’s active engagement, Mellor foregrounds this relationship by composing works of arresting beauty that compel viewers to re-enact the process of composition with the artist. These original paintings are a set of enticements and seductions for viewers that make a bold, affirmative statement for new directions in painting today.

In his work Mellor often combines references abstracted from landscape and organic forms, cityscapes and architecture, and cascading fabric from fashion design in totally new ways. His astonishing and original color harmonies command attention and continually reward viewers who take a contemplative pause and convert compositional space into time.  Mellor is also the edge master, sculpting visual space with his hard-edge lines and interplay of forms, working at the edge of figuration and abstraction, building paintings from multiple layers that push the works into three dimensions as substantial objects in their own right.

In new paintings, expansion comes through combining ground layers of ink washes on which the multiple layers of acrylic are imposed in sharp relief. Robert Mellor’s new paintings present several independent lines of inquiry. As in previous exhibitions, Mellor explores the tension between highly stylized forms and representation through his hard edge layered process. Shifting forms collide on the surface of the work, balancing frozen gestures with the organic. The result of improvisational sessions, these hybrid paintings merge flat pattern with spatial illusion, all presented in shallow sculptural relief. The physically intriguing and attractive nature of his unusual painting process is best experienced in person.