Margaret Mellis, artist, was born on January 22, 1914. She died on March 17, 2009, aged 95. She was one of the last surviving artists from the St. Ives Group of the 1930s.
Colour was her true element and she developed a strong constructivist flavor, seen in the often severely geometric collages and wooden assemblages. Mellis shared my love of aged and layered paint — peeling, changing, revealing– and her pieces assembled from weathered wood draw me in.
From an article about the life of Ms. Mellis that appeared in The Times the following paragraph captures what I appreciate about this artist that seemed to be both for her time and ahead of her time in her response to the world around her.
The driftwood constructions belie the sophistication and technical skill imbued in this body of work. Transforming the debris of human activity into objects permeated with an elemental energy, a profound expression in which humour, pathos and the poetic all play their part. This was Mellis’s response to the world in which she lived for nearly a century.
The piece below is from Austin Desmond Fine Arts where you can see many of her pieces.
Here is a glimpse of the artist in a clip from a documentary titled “A Life in Colour”
If you are not familiar with this artist many newspapers have published tributes that share her life in a snapshot:
The Times which included the lovely photograph of the artist shown above.
I enjoyed the art and video of Margaret Mellis.
julie´s last blog ..The Best In Color: July Week 5