Melissa Shaak

Melissa Shaak's abstract acrylic paintings balance color shifts with amorphous forms that appear ponderous, whimsical or surreal. She explores how the act of concealing, by means of overpainting with large swaths of flat color, reveals and brings focus to the sprawl of life in the layers underneath. Shaak experiments with both imagery and medium — archetypal figures find themselves in paintings, sculptural cutouts of their forms, and as an ensemble captured on video. Her most recent work is at the intersection of experimental video and performance art. In her videos, Shaak personifies a seeker whose exertions reveal a deep desire to connect interior and exterior worlds.

Shaak's work has been exhibited at Beacon Gallery, Piano Craft Gallery, The Umbrella Arts Center, Concord Art, Brickbottom Gallery, and The Carving Studio and Sculpture Center. She is a longstanding member of the Creativity Lab at New Art Center and a recent resident at Vermont Studio Center. In addition to taking coursework at Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Mass College of Art, she has studied with artists Adria Arch and Robert Siegelman and video creator Michael Sheridan. Shaak works from her studio at River Street Artists/Waltham Mills, MA.

Additional work can be seen on Shaak’s website <www.melissashaak.net>.

Fountain Street Exhibitions: Form and Emptiness, The Sidewalk Video Gallery, The Space for Maybe, Out of Nowhere, Upended, Sharp Focus, Read Between the Lines, Annex Show-October 2018

Fountain Street Curated Collections: The Boundaries Between