ARTIST MELINDA TIDWELL
BUNNY CIRCLES 2
MIXED MEDIA COLLAGE
MODERN LIBRARY
MIXED MEDIA COLLAGE
BESSIE LANGFORD
BOOK OF CHANGES 2013
BUILD BOOST MAKE
MIXED MEDIA COLLAGE
120218: THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
OK CLASSICS
SUMMER READING NUMBER 2
EDSEL
FICTION PLANET
FASCINATING
PROTRACTED INVESTIGATION
RETURNING TO THE PRESENT
THE MEMORY STARTS HERE
BOOKSHOP
WEBSTERS RASTA
ARTIST
MELINDA TIDWELL
Melinda was born in 1959, in a small town in the
Rocky Mountains of northern Utah. She attended university in Salt Lake
City and graduated with honors in Mathematics. Her first career, in
computer graphics, was an ideal blend of the mathematical and the visual.
Her lifelong interest in abstraction and visual language now finds
expression in her work as a fine artist.
Melinda lives in the Santa Fe, New Mexico with
her husband, two cats and two dogs.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work begins with the formal aspects of design and a fascination
with the balance of visual elements in composition. Using simple geometric
shapes and rectilinear alignments, I focus on the coherence and
juxtaposition of color, pattern, placement and size.
My background in mathematics, computer graphics, and design informs
my predilection for the geometric. this rational foundation serves as the
basis for my departure into what is not rational: the way colors activate
each other, how size and position muddle or enhance visual unity, the
simple grace of worn and tattered surfaces. The picture plane becomes a
dialogue of vibrant, abstract voices unifed by a logic one can feel but
not fully understand. This, to me, is wonderfully mysterious and
enlivening.
Using discarded books as my primary material adds both seriousness and
levity to my work. I like working with words, pieces of text, the odd
string of numbers. Cut away from their original context, they operate as
texture and shape and also as a kind of code, or pieces of memory. The
abstraction of this information into bits of non-sense, hopes to tease the
mind into the wilder lands of free association and one’s own imagination.
The peculiar sensation of a world slightly askew gives me no end of
delight.
