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Filled with images of modern suburban homes, swimming pools, lifeguard stations, and iconic vintage
cars, Melissa Chandon’s recent paintings continue her exploration of the spaces, structures, and
ideals that have defined the American landscape of the past half-century. Set against pared-down
backgrounds of sand, grass, and sky, these simple yet compelling forms, their designs dating back to
the postwar period, speak to the American dream of a suburban utopia. Her paintings are at once
lively and contemplative, with quiet moments rendered in her signature palette of vivid, expressive
color.
Chandon’s compositions are marked by strong shadows, a unifying graphic component that also
serves to anchor her forms to the landscape and position the images in time. As an artist interested in
the fate of the communities and environments depicted in her paintings, it seems meaningful that her
works transform ephemeral shadows into bold, fixed elements—an act of capturing and sustaining
fleeting moments in time through art. “I paint not to be nostalgic,” she has written, “but to raise basic
questions about social, cultural, economic, and political change. Remembering what the past feels
like through conjured memories is a way of encountering, and countering, the here and now.”
Chandon spent her early career in the Sacramento Valley, whose fields, cars, and architecture
shaped her formative years as an artist; the influences for her recent paintings include Grant Wood,
Edward Hopper, and Robert Bechtel, masters of depicting the American vernacular. Renowned
painter Wayne Thiebaud, Chandon’s mentor, who shares her passion for a delectable palette and
arresting compositions, has noted that her “effective synthesis of abstract and representational
elements” give her works “an intensity and raw graphic power to behold.”
In addition to numerous international art fairs, Chandon has exhibited her work at the Center for
Contemporary Art, Sacramento and the Richard L. Nelson Gallery at the University of California,
Davis, among many others. Her artwork is included in the Morgan Flagg Collection at the de Young
Museum, San Francisco and the University of California, Davis’ Shields Library, as well as in
corporate and notable private collections. She earned her MFA from the Art Institute of Boston at
Lesley University and resides in Northern California.
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