June2007

Wayne Thiebaud, Professor of Art Emeritus, University of California, Davis
"She has developed an effective synthesis of abstract and representational elements in her works. This gives the works an intensity and raw graphic power to behold"

Jemima J. Harr, Museum Director-Curator, Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California
Melissa Chandon’s oil paintings are rendered with a passionate physical language that evokes a deep feeling of isolation and loneliness amidst the welcoming Sacramento Valley air. The intentional use of negative space via shape and shadow create an aura of solitude and privacy to which the viewer is slowly drawn into the environment.

These compressed landscapes suggest a place where our most interpersonal memories dwell, and reinforce the seclusion necessary to reflect upon this feeling. The flatness of the space requires the need to hesitate just on the surface to echo upon the intimate setting. As in Road 31, the warm glow from the golden field draws the viewer closer, allowing for deep contemplation while the dark shadow in the foreground requires one to pause prior to facing the desperate remoteness of emotional aloneness.

Chandon’s representation of the conventional mid-20^th century automobile and farm equipment reflect her traditional deserted landscape where a feeling of isolation persists. These vanishing subjects of beloved rural society bolster a need to ponder the past and create a personal connection with this rare slice of Americana. The deep shadows amongst the warm valley sky illuminate the lone utilitarian subject, and draw the viewer in for further consideration and personal recollections.

Melissa Chandon’s interpretation of the vast Sacramento Valley landscape is extraordinary, taking on the individual need for isolation and reflection amidst the disappearing history that is so familiar.

Blake Stimson, Ph. D, Associate Professor of Art History, University of California, Davis
Field of interest: 20th Century and Contemporary Art, History of Photography, Historiography and Critical Theory

The best of Melissa Chandon's paintings perforate the viewer with a mix of psychological unease and sensual delight. Muller Ranch I, painted in 2005, for example, illustrates this well. On the one hand, it offers the beholder all the warm air, stillness, flattened landscape and open space that can sometimes make the central valley seem a welcome reprieve from the bustle and fog of bay and coast. On the other, it presents us with that same penetrating sensual pleasure--the momentary bodily experience of a slower, simpler life--as if at a remove, as if seen from the other side of the protective barrier of polarizing sunglasses. This distancing gives the seductive documentary vitality that runs through many of Chandon's rural and agricultural paintings a pop twist, drawing us back from our momentary salt-of-the-earth experience to more urbane and cultured reflections. In this way her work strikes the affective balance that characterizes any meaningful realism: it calls up deep-seated desires with an appeal to a world beyond our own while ever reminding us of the world here and now out of which those desires are born.

Scott A. Shields, Ph.D., Chief Curator, Crocker Art Museum

"The surfaces of Chandon's paintings make her traditional subject matter seem contemporary. Yet, these same surfaces, along with Chandon's moody colors, evoke a sense of melancholy and mystery, serving as hazy veils that cloud our memory."