Melissa Monroe is arguably Portland, Oregon's most playful outsider artist, creating work that is both whimsical and joyous. The self-taught artist picked up painting in 2013, went full time in 2014, and has since made and sold over 1,500 pieces. Her masks, sculptures, textiles, and acrylic paintings are loud with color and pattern, but there's also something tender and heavy underneath. She describes the work as a mask that radiates beauty while holding life's harsher truths, with sadness, love, and joy all vibrating together just below the surface. What started with paint, eventually shifted to working with yarn as sculpture, and now Melissa has become one of the leading names in the contemporary tufting movement. What's tufting you ask? Watch this conversation and you'll know more than when you started.
Melissa first got involved in tufting in 2021 and in making the shift, she applied her painting approaches and her love of abstraction, antiques and nature into a tactile artform that feels musical and childlike. Her work has been featured on Oregon Art Beat and in Hi-Fructose, Fiber Art Now, American Craft, and the Tuft the World book, and has shown at the Outsider Art Fair in New York, SCOPE Miami, and the Seattle Art Fair.
This is a conversation about following your own weird instincts and building a full creative life around those instincts, never second-guessing the inspiration that comes to you and through you unexpected. This are exactly the kind of process that Melissa Monroe embraces , and the result is a pure delight.
https://shop.melissamonroeart.com
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