Melissa Gile Artist Biography

Melissa Gile is a self-taught artist working out of her home studio located in Hamburg, Germany. She grew up in Seattle and has resided in Europe since 2014.

Her paintings have been exhibited in Hamburg and Berlin, with features internationally by Create! Magazine, Visionary Art Collective, The Curator’s Salon, The Purposeful Mayonnaise, CandyFloss Magazine, and more.

Through her work, Gile explores her emotional relationship with home and living her dream from across the world. Inspired by impressionist, abstract and surrealist styles, she incorporates themes from nature and fantasy in her works to facilitate a romantic sense of bliss in her dreamscapes.

Statement

Since leaving Seattle in 2014, Melissa has made 15 moves within Europe and the United States. Inspired by her journey of finding a sense of home within herself during this time, her current series “Dreamland” explores her intimate relationship with the near and the far. By experimenting with perspective and color, she considers the spectrum of emotions associated with this period in her life. A vibrant palette conveys a sense of intense emotion and imagination which for her are key aspects of losing oneself to a sense of romance in life.

She shares the beauty of this experience by inviting spontaneity and play into her process. Starting with a vibrant, contrasting foundation, she sets the tone of the painting with a smooth gradient base layer. Out of the movement and imperfections of this gradient, she uses quick brushstrokes to create the illusion of foliage growing from the cracks and shadows, echoing the forests of her Pacific Northwest home across her paintings. The looseness with which she paints gives her room to pour love into the process as she moves, letting life bloom from these spaces. Due to the fast drying times of acrylic paints, she is compelled to a state of improvisation which translates to an ethereal, dreamy mood in her paintings.

She hopes to inspire the viewer to pause and get lost in the enchantment of life, momentarily escaping into a dream of their own.