Melissa Button

Artist Statement:
It was through my studies in architecture that I began to explore the delicate balance between the natural world and the way in which life imposes its structure upon it. In many ways my work still encompasses these same ideas. I seek to capture a moment where order/structure and chaos/nature merge with one another revealing an undefined beauty and balance that supersedes the individual and is a part of all things. The factory-scapes represent the coexistence of order and chaos. The structures are built in order to process the organic growth in the fields. These intricate factories stand in contrast to the vast, uniform fields that surround them. The evolution of these fields throughout the year becomes a constant reminder of how things are continually changing, and there is always the hope of new beginnings. The invented landscapes, which are inspired by many of the elements that intrigue me about the factory-scapes, are an amalgamation of a chaotic system and an ordered system brought about by their influence on one another. The scale of the work quietly summons the viewer to a private intimate experience with the paintings. It is here where images that initially appear simple begin to reveal a more complex reality. All of the images are based on a grid, in which the horizontal and vertical elements are continually being repositioned into foreground, middle ground, and background layers. The overlapping of these layers creates fractured spaces that are defined by their own internal logic. The painted panels are then sanded, cut-up, repositioned, and added onto. This process compels me to react intuitively to the image, which helps to balance my instinct to control. Here, I am forced to consider a new direction for the painting that I had not anticipated. Calmer passages are delicately interwoven with more dynamic ones while the shallow spaces are physically divided from the deeper spaces, which recede into the unknown. The integration of these visual elements renders an image that is infinite in spite of its physical size, and creates a believable reality that lures the viewer into a quiet, peculiar place.