Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. I have been following Melissa Meyer’s career as closely as possible since I first wrote about her work in 2009.
Admittedly, I was a latecomer: Meyer began exhibiting in the early 1970s, when the art world was dominated by Pop Art, Color Field painting, and Minimalism, all of which were regarded as reactions against Abstract Expressionism, particularly its use of the hand and autobiographical gesture. Then again, Meyer could also be considered untimely, as she never felt compelled to reject drawing in paint. From the mid-1970s until 2001, she made looping, elegant brushstrokes of evenly dispersed paint across large surfaces.
What I think many critics have missed in writing about these works is the level of control required of the artist to arrive at her lush, graceful surfaces. This was not associated with Abstract Expressionism, whose effect the poet James Schuyler described as: “the floods of paint in whose crashing surf we all scramble.” Between 2001 and 2003, Meyer decided to change her practice without giving up her AbEx roots.
She began working in watercolor, the antithesis of oil paint; this led her to thin her oil paint, giving it a liquidity that had not been part of her previous work. At the.
