Melissa Monroe
Eternal Sunrise
La Matador Gallery
July 8 – August 6, 2023
“Growth only happens with change. May you never hold your dreams underwater,” says Portland, Oregon-based artist Melissa Monroe, in a show catalogue for her solo exhibit Eternal Sunrise on view at La Matadora Gallery in Joshua Tree. Ever exercising a diverse range of mediums and experiments in expression, it seems the artist heartily puts this sentiment into action.
Through this current collection of works (created over the last three years and curated by Alea Bone), we experience a plethora of irregular figurations which represent animals, humans, and shapes of emotion. With an initial background in painting, Monroe has grown her usage of color over the years to include, most recently, tufting – essentially the art of painting with wool. Driven by her fascination with pattern, abstraction, and texture, the artist now gives her creatures further dimension by weaving shaggy manes and raised features onto their playful, patterned forms.
Holding Dreams Underwater
Stacked Cats, for instance, shows two abstract feline faces squished on top of one another. Their smooth cheeks and noses are contrasted by tousled muzzles and whiskered ears, all wrapped together with reds, peaches, browns and off-whites. While many of Monroe’s fibrous creations are wall-hung, others are more sculptural, proudly standing on all fours, as in Resting Slowly, a sturdy looking tortoise whose patterned face betrays a rather bashful gaze. According to the curator, more sculptural works, of various material and scale, can be expected in Monroe’s creative trajectory.
The exhibit also features many of the artist’s whimsical ink and watercolor drawings, and bold, expressionistic paintings. In isolation, these mediums and styles could be considered disparate from one another, yet somehow, their combined effect whispers of the adventurous creativity inherent in the artist. With their buoyant colors, amusing facial expressions, and interesting line compositions, these subjects harmoniously co-exist in a dimension undoubtedly sprung from the same curious imagination.
Sail Away, Carry On
In the painting Holding Dreams Underwater, the exterior of a bull is decorated by festive blue, red, yellow, and green strokes, yet nestled beneath are symbolic layers revealing the creature’s true inner state. Apparent is the deep-seated sorrow in its left eye, the obscure sad face scribbled into its chest, and in the stomach area below, what look to be little birds fettered in darkness. In reference to the aforementioned quote, it unfortunately seems this bull did not heed such advice.
Stacked Cats
Despite the occasional sullen note, the exhibit has an overall optimistic quality: We get the sense that whichever character dwells in Monroe’s realm will make out okay in the end, no matter the emotional hiccup. With the underlying sentiment that each day brings a new beginning, bright bursts of color, and the artist’s unending exploration of medium, this show indeed reminds one of a vitalizing, eternal sunrise.
Cover image: Unsure But Going; all images courtesy of La Matador Gallery and photographed by the author.
