Melanie Rose explores landscape and place through painting, she is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds Arts and Humanities Institute (LAHRI), after successfully completing a practice-led PhD. Prior education includes, MA Central Saint Martins, BA (Hons) Trent Polytechnic and Foundation Winchester School of Art. Melanie is a member of LAND2, a national network of artist/researchers with an interest in place-oriented art. She has exhibited widely and has work in both private and public collections.
Artist statement
My artwork is inspired by walking the South Downs Way and focusses on topics such as geo-mythology, ecology and the Anthropocene as well as cultural trends, access and artistic movements. Recently I have been especially inspired by artists who have created night-time paintings using the luminosity of the chalk during a full moon.
Working with and making materials sympathetic to the landscape, including chalk-gesso, egg tempera and oak gall ink, I am now developing a way of painting with oil paint on top of egg tempera to coalesce the figurative with the abstract.
All of the work is about the landscape and the figure whether it is to do with the ghosts of those who have walked in the landscape or who are buried beneath the tumuli, each painting addresses a different part of the South Downs Way and is as much about looking forwards as it is backwards through time and space including the uncanny connections and circular associations.
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