Melanie Vote

MFA 1998 Painting, The Graduate School of Figurative Art of the New York Academy of Art, (cum laude) New York, NY; BFA 1995 Craft Design Iowa State University, Ames, IA 

"My Little People series, which began mid-2006, is in an early experimental stage. Borrowing from the alluring visual qualities of white porcelain objects and sculptures of antiquity, I have begun to cast these dolls in plaster to recreate the same visual appeal. The casts are then used as maquettes to paint from. These first compositions are simple and straightforward, in order to make the dolls seem iconic in nature. By casting them in plaster I am attempting heighten the viewer's curiosity of the simple doll shapes from childhood, thus imbuing it with statuesque importance, an icon perhaps of childhood past.

I aim to heighten the viewer's sense of curiosity by altering things slightly, inviting revaluation of seemingly mundane objects from the past. Additionally, I desire to return to the mid-west this summer to paint a series of landscapes studies. As a native of Iowa living in New York for over ten years now, I long for the openness of the plains. While in residency I would execute a series of landscape studies with the focus on the vast skies and iconic images such as water towers and grain elevators indicative of the region. These in turn would serve as research for future work. The new paintings will depict rural landscapes with objects such as water towers, replaced with the shape of the iconic doll form. These human forms recall grandiose monolithic sculptures seen in Ancient cultures such as the Olmec and Mayan civilizations that do not exist in contemporary culture. I wish to ask, in our ephemeral landscape what will remain to tell of our civilization?"