IN HER OWN WORDS

Terri Melnick, above, once wrote:

“I like to put something of myself into a painting. I express the uniqueness that makes me an artist. That uniqueness in a painting is the content. It is a special sensitivity to my environment; my special way of seeing things.

I paint what is important to me. I accept and discard techniques and methods as appropriate or inappropriate to express my own concepts.

When I enter a show, I like to send something that I have seen; something the world will miss without me; something I have painted from the heart that I care about intensely during the painting process; something I have made special by my vision of it.

Painting that achieves a tension between the visible world and the imagined one is more to my liking than painting that is strictly designed-based. I cannot approach my work with truth to the object and proper appearance as its only reason for being.

I do not see things exactly the way they are. I see things filtered through my experiences, my emotions, my intellect. An artist makes the real seem unreal and the unreal seem real. Each person in the world has a song in his heart, and they should listen to that.

It becomes a challenge to not figure out what is, but to stimulate our minds to engage in an imaginative experience.

My art is much more than applying paint to paper. It is no longer just what I do; it is who and what I am.”