CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Melissa Boughey

*News Update*
Melissa has been announced as a finalist in both the 2023 City of Stirling Art Awards, Perth and the 2023 City of Melville Art Awards. We wish her the best of luck!

Melissa Boughey’s painting practice speaks of a life lived on the land and an intimate connection with both the wild and tamed landscapes formed through her close daily interactions working on her farm and her commitment to revegetating native habitat. Ocean swims, walking the dog, and drawing plein-air in the rich paperbark wetlands a stones throw from her studio make up some of her deeply resonant experiences of landscape. Melissa’s loose plein air drawings allow the viewer a glimpse into the artists working process and provide a visual clue to some of the shapes and forms that emerge in her resulting paintings.

Beginning with the artist’s immersion within the landscape - jotting notes; scribbling responses; creating a shorthand code for the natural environment - experimentation and play are paramount to the intuitive process of her paintings. Through mark-making, colour play, and a sense of integrity toward materials and surfaces, her visceral works in oil and hand-made beeswax mediums are allowed to develop of their own accord until a final, resolved memory of a landscape emerges.

'The artist’s translations of her surroundings, her sense of perception, thought and emotional responses, all coalesce in her large, fluid images; first sketched in shorthand on paper and then built up into larger impasto canvases. Loose gestural explosions of colour and line tell us abstractly of the environment that surrounds her. Great daubs of purple brown speak of undulating earth; pools of orange indicate the rising up of a hill or valley; rapid gestures capture the quality of scrubby bush and vertical repetitions suggest an outcrop of trees. Within these expressive images the physical process of observation, appreciation and individual interpretation coalesce in a newly reflected world where mind and matter are fused into one.'
Excerpt from catalogue essay by Phe Luxford, 2021

Boughey completed a Bachelor of Arts at Curtin University in 1994 before moving to Southern WA where she and her family run a small farm vineyard and cellar door. In the last decade Melissa has focused on her arts practice, holding many group and solo exhibitions, as well as being selected finalist in a number of national shows including the City of Stirling Art Awards (2023), the City of Melville Art Awards (2023), Muswellbrook Art Prize (2021, 2019), The Paul Guest Prize for Drawing (2016), Kogarah Art Prize (2015), Albany Art Prize (2015), Lloyd Rees Landscape Prize (2015) & Fleurieu Art Prize (2011) amongst others.

She currently works from her home studio, overlooking pristine rehabilitated wetlands, and takes inspiration from her immediate surroundings. She exhibits regularly in Melbourne, Sydney and regional Western Australia. Her work is held in the Busselton Health Service, Mental Health Unit, WA, The Office of the Public Sector, Government of Western Australia and private collections in Australia, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and France.

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Media Highlights

From Arve River to Miena 2023
oil on linen
157cm x 198cm unframed
$12,000 AUD

State of Flux, Symbiosis 2023
oil and beeswax on canvas
150cm x 150cm unframed
$9,500 AUD

Sum of Parts, Interlude 2023
oil and beeswax on canvas
150cm x 150cm unframed
$9,500 AUD

Hartz Mountains (In the Midst of Mist, Silver Birch) 2023
oil on canvas
103cm x 93cm framed
$4,000 AUD

Hartz Mountains (Glacial Lakes and Coral Fern) 2023
oil on canvas
103cm x 93cm framed
$4,000 AUD

Hartz Mountains (In the Alpine Plateau) 2023
oil on canvas
103cm x 93cm framed
$4,000 AUD

Cross-Pollination (Parry's Inlet, where the osprey feeds) 2023
mixed media on 300gsm Arches
114cm x 150cm (122 x 158cm charcoal-stained oak, framed)
$5,900 AUD

Cross-Pollination (Arve River Campfire) 2023
mixed media on 300gsm Arches
114cm x 150cm unframed
$4,700 AUD

Cross-Pollination (Silver Birch Walk Morse code) 2023
mixed media on 300gsm Arches
114cm x 150cm unframed
$4,700 AUD

Take Me To The Waters Edge (Beyond The Paperbarks) 2021
mixed media on paper
81cm x 58cm
(framed size 92 x 68cm)
On exhibition at the Pleysier Perkins Art Space
$2,750 AUD

Take Me To The Waters Edge (Magenta Tree Shadow) 2021
mixed media on paper
81cm x 58cm
(framed size 92 x 68cm)
On exhibition at the Pleysier Perkins Art Space
$2,750 AUD

Spotty Gum and Stripey (chasing shadows) 2019
oil and beeswax on canvas, framed
100cm x 90cm
$3,300 AUD

Quiet Poise 2021
oil on canvas
23cm x 28cm
Raw Oak frame
$850 AUD

Camp Trees III (Acraman Camp) 2021
mixed media on paper
30cm x 39cm
On exhibition at the Pleysier Perkins Art Space
$550 AUD

Cliff Face II 2021
mixed media on paper
30cm x 39cm On exhibition at the Pleysier Perkins Art Space
$550 AUD

Camp Trees II (Acraman Camp) 2021
mixed media on paper
30cm x 39cm On exhibition at the Pleysier Perkins Art Space
$550 AUD

Cliff Face I 2021
mixed media on paper
30cm x 39cm
Raw Oak frame with UV glass (non reflective)
On exhibition at the Pleysier Perkins Art Space
$550 AUD

After Trephina Walk I 2023
gouache on board
11cm x 21cm (framed 25 x 35)
$950 AUD

After Trephina Walk II 2023
gouache on board
11cm x 21cm (framed 25x35cm)
$950 AUD

End of Day (Palette Notes) II 2023
oil on board
15cm x 45cm (18 x 48cm framed)
$950 AUD

Ross River Homestead (Window View) II 2023
oil on board
17cm x 63cm framed
$1,200 AUD

Day 3 Tjoritja, In the periphery 2023
mixed media on paper
40cm x 57cm (51 x 68cm framed)
$1,200 AUD

Drawn in (riverbed to ochre cliff) 2023
mixed media on paper
42cm x 30cm unframed
$400 AUD

Termite Markings II 2023
mixed media on paper
42cm x 30cm unframed
$400 AUD

Termite Markings I 2023
mixed media on paper
42cm x 30cm unframed
$400 AUD