"For my work to succeed it should be concerned with reality, but that part of reality that is inexact, uncertain, mysterious, maybe anxious and in a state of becoming - an art involved with feelings."
- Melissa Meyer, Art News, November, 1982
“Melissa Meyer recounted recently that during an event at Christies auction house she happened upon a display of the famous Bob Dylan electric guitar accompanied by several sheets of hand-written lyrics that had been found in the guitar case. She described that she found herself keenly interested in his handwriting and how it expressed a sense of temperament. Generally legible, his handwriting has a kind of urgency and tension. About one of the sheets, a handwriting analyst wrote that it appears Dylan “prefers directness, accuracy, exactness and simplicity.”
One senses that Meyer favors those qualities as well. Her paintings are accumulations of very sure-handed calligraphic marks that intertwine, overlap or abutt each other, on top of pale colors laid down to establish the tone of each work. The gestures are often spiky and angular with a quality of tensile strength, and sometimes feature suave curves and a more relaxed tempo.
Tempo is something also very much on Meyer’s mind. Several of the paintings are named for dance steps. […] The liveliness of the high-keyed colors if these paintings is in keeping with their affinity for music and dance.”
- Jill Weinberg Adams, 2014
Essays and Statements by Melissa Meyer
Melissa Meyer Remembers Jean Dubuffet at the Jeu de Paume, 1991, in Painters on Painting, May 23, 2016.
Artist's Project: Melissa Meyer in Esopus 22 (Spring 2015)
"Quotes and Watercolors" in The Sienese Shredder
"Femmage" with Miriam Schapiro from HERESIES (1978) (PDF)