Description
Opening is a mixed media bouquet painting created during Attending To Light, a body of work developed during Melissa Lea’s four-month Artist In Residency at The Art Center in Dover, New Hampshire.
Mixed Media Bouquet Painting in the Attending To Light Series
Here a bouquet rises from a quiet vessel. Then color opens outward into a warm field. As a result, the painting suggests the moment when something hidden begins to appear.
Deep blues and indigo anchor the center of the flowers. Meanwhile, luminous whites and vibrant greens move outward into the surrounding space. In this way, the composition holds both depth and lift.
This mixed media bouquet painting explores light that lives within color rather than light cast from outside.
Melissa Lea builds the surface with acrylic and painted tissue paper collage. Because of these layered marks, the surface shifts as light changes. A subtle pearl-infused hue adds a quiet glow. Throughout the Attending To Light body of work, this pearl element appears again and again.
Below the bouquet, a calm blue-grey vessel creates balance. Above it, expressive marks bring movement and energy. At the same time, the textured background acts as atmosphere rather than a wall.
The Residency and Creative Process
During the residency, Melissa Lea explored intuition, color, and discovery. Over four months she developed non-representational abstractions, companion bouquet paintings, and culminating large-scale works. Together these paintings form a larger exploration of illumination and emergence.
The residency provided time and space to listen and respond. As a result, each painting developed step by step. Color guided the process. Then gesture followed.
Within this series, Opening represents a beginning. Color gathers. Light expands. Therefore the image still feels alive and unfolding.
The painting holds a quiet sense of discovery ~ an opening where light, color, and form continue to emerge.
Details
Title: Opening
Size: 14 × 11 in
Medium: Acrylic and mixed media with painted tissue paper collage and pearl-infused hue
Surface: Canvas panel
Series: Attending To Light
Year: 2025–2026 Residency Body of Work
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