Melissa Merritt

Melissa J. Merritt is an exhibiting member of the Santa Fe Artists Market as well as the Santa Fe Society of Artists. Her work is represented by the Roadrunner gallery in Madrid, New Mexico. Melissa creates watercolor paintings inspired by her love of nature. She photographs her subjects extensively before planning her compositions. For Melissa, the real enjoyment comes with treating every shape as a tiny meditation. Melissa uses a grid technique to divide complicated reference into bite-sized pieces. It is a process for enlarging or scaling up, but also allows for a division of visual data.

Melissa studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she received a B.F.A. in Illustration and an A.A.S. in Jewelry Design. She later studied in Florence and was accepted into an artist residency at the Byrdecliffe Artist Colony in Woodstock, New York. Melissa completed her art specialist certification at Parsons School of Design, New School University and completed her M.A. in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Melissa is the Visual Art educator at the Rio Grande School in Santa Fe and has completed her first children’s book The Bluest Sky, a bilingual introduction to the plants, animals, and landscape of New Mexico’s high desert beauty.

About Melissa’s process:

Melissa uses transparent Schmincke watercolors on stretched Arches watercolor paper. Her paintings are coated with Golden archival varnish to protect against UV and reduce light damage. Her Giclees are fine art prints that are made with archival ink on German etch Hahnemuhle paper.