MELISA COLVIN 

ARTIST STATEMENT

Thinking about how I have come to the images I have made, I realize how much of it stems from a constant and nearly compulsive observation of the subtleties and details of the environment I am in.  Light passing through a glass door handle in the hallway, or the entire universe existing quietly in a palm sized patch of moss, become captivating. In these places, I find rapture.  I believe the internal impulse to create images from these observations is to carry on that sense of potential, highlight it, expand on it, make it permanent and present it to others.   In the process of doing so, the quantity of time spent allows for further contemplation and exploration and, for me, a deeper personal connection developed from my own individual history and experiences.  The hope is that perhaps a viewer, carrying a different history, will discover something there just as valid as my own hesitant ideas, and there create their own and carry them forward. 

Born and raised in Rochester, NY, Melisa received a BFA in Professional Photographic Illustration along with a minor in Philosophy from the Rochester Institute of Technology.  While her primary tools are photographic, she sculpts, paints and builds sets on which her images are based.  Melisa currently lives and works in Astoria, Oregon.