Artist Bio

Melissa Labnow is an artist based in Los Angeles, who largely focuses on painting (mostly watercolor and acrylic), but also explores printmaking, photography, drawing, and digital painting. She finds inspiration for her art in the physical world (largely landscapes and architecture), through the people she interacts with, and her own family and identity. She is interested in using art to explore surreal landscapes, light and shadow, and the interaction of colors. Through her practice, she explores the interaction between nature and man-made structures (architecture), the expression of emotion through unique color schemes and abstract brush strokes, and intuitive mark-making in her more abstract work. 

 

Melissa earned her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, at Pepperdine University. During her time in undergrad, Melissa studied abroad with Studio Arts Centers International (SACI) in Florence, Italy, where she took classes in serigraphy and batik, and first discovered a love for printmaking. At Pepperdine, she participated in the Spring Junior Studio Exhibit: "Evidence of Effective Struggle," which was her first exhibition. For her Senior Thesis Project, she created a body of work that would have been part of the Senior Studio Exhibit "Untitled: This Might Get Personal" which would have been shown in the Weisman Museum on campus, but was unfortunately moved online due to the ongoing Covid pandemic. 

 

Since graduating, Melissa has worked to build a personal studio practice and continue to create work that explores the physical and emotional world around her, with a variety of materials (both found and traditional) and several mediums, including but not limited to, Linocut printmaking, watercolor, acrylic painting, and ink drawing/painting.