Artist Statement

Each painting functions as its own entity, animated by plural intelligence, suggesting that the paintings know something that we do not. Rather than asking what reality is, the work attends to how convincingly it presents itself, proposing that what we see is only the apparition of a more intricate and elusive world. 

Bio

Melissa Carter (b. 1989, Kentucky) is a large-scale abstract painter living and working in Austin, Texas, whose ecstatic landscapes consider the self-defining nature of reality. She studied piano at the University of Kentucky and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting, with honors, from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Carter has exhibited internationally, including group shows in Guatemala City, Rio de Janeiro, and Florianópolis, Brazil. In the US, she has presented a solo exhibition at Institute 193 (2018), a solo photography exhibition at the University of Kentucky (2016), and participated in group shows at venues such as the Diego Rivera Gallery in San Francisco and Land of Tomorrow in Lexington. In 2019, she completed a residency in Antigua, Guatemala, where she drew on ideas from philosophy and literature to examine the construction of truth through imagery. Her work has been featured in Burnaway, Vulture, Subbacultcha, and Vuu Studio.

Carter previously served as Curator of the St. George Museum of Art, organizing exhibitions that explored both contemporary and historical perspectives. That curatorial experience continues to inform her painting practice, which examines the relationships between illusion, perception, and the hidden structures of the material and metaphysical world.