Melanie Johnson

Melanie Johnson is a visual artist working with ideas concerning the physical body. She holds a BFA in Fine Art from Missouri State University, and in 2006 she was awarded her Masters of Fine Art with an emphasis in painting from the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts at Indiana University. Her drawings aim to reveal how physical awareness is a requirement for understanding the concept of self and the processes of how growth and deterioration force one to reconcile the constantly changing relationship of physicality and identity.

Johnson writes: “Aspects of my work examine the links between physicality and emotional identity and the role of memory in connection of the two. Creating self-portraits from perception is an act of investigation that allows for careful and deliberate scrutiny of one’s own presence. The result is a translation that is a tenuous yet specific recording of a relationship to one’s physicality.”