Hello and welcome to my page, I am a Visual Artist
Melenie was raised on Long Island, New York. She received both her BSc and MA Degrees from New York University. Later, she went on to study at the Art Students League of New York under the tutelage of the great American painter, Knox Martin. She has participated as a painter in numerous exhibitions throughout Canada and the United States in addition to many of her paintings finding a home in private collections. As an artist-in-residence, she has worked with the Vancouver School Board where she was responsible for the design and production of numerous school murals and installation projects. Melenie is a co-founding Director of the non-profit society, Theatre of Fire, whose mission is to collaborate with multimedia artists, musicians, researchers and anthropologists to name a few on special projects about social justice, historical events, climate change and storytelling, which include exhibitions, productions and videos. After serving as the Art Director for Remembering Steel Skies Raining Tears, a musical multimedia production about personal experiences of Holocaust survivors she became the photographer for the Dehcho project. “Dehcho: A River Journey" is a multimedia musical performance showing the journey along the Mackenzie River that marked 100 years since the signing of Treaty 11 between the Dene people of the North West Territories and the Government of Canada. Melenie spent time observing and photographing elementary and high school classes where films created from ancient Inuvialuit and Dene stories were shown to children. In addition to photographing the sessions, she helped the School Board review of how the programme might be used with students in British Columbia schools. Melenie has travelled to the Northwest Territories, stopping in small villages to meet Dene women whose work she photographed. She later wrote: "When we reached the rapids at Sambaa Deh, we went to the cabin of Lucy Simon. She showed us how she dyed tufts of moose hair to create vibrant patterns on moose hide. I felt privileged to learn about the art form that she loves.” As a culminating experience with her colleagues from up-North and down-South Melenie participated as a painter in a group art exhibition with a live music video production called, “Crossed Paths”, at the Zach Gallery - which explores the connection between the Jewish and the Dene peoples whose connections began in the federal Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. Photographing and painting bison and forests, plants and people, Melenie continues to put brush to canvas to share her experiences through the art of painting and photography that she loves. Melenie is a member of the BolderArtists; consisting of three painters and two photographers who collaborate and exhibit together. BolderArtists have shown at the Eastside Cultural Crawl to the Anvil Centre Community Art Gallery, “ Convergents / Intersections ”, and now the PoMoArts Gallery, “ 360/ 5” exhibition.
Contact Details
Fleischer, Melenie
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Samples of my work
Artist Statement
“Growing up in New York, I lived both in the bustle of the city and in the ravishing countryside of the Catskill Mountains; between psychedelic urban landscapes and the rush and exhilaration of our Mother Earth.” Creating art for me requires tapping into a source of raw energy and transforming it with expressive and synthetic configurations. These non-reality arrangements of forms, lines and colour are taken from nature, my surroundings and experiences. Exploring a complexity of sources from my environment such as a symbol of a tree hand-painted with thick acrylic paint or thousands of squirrely paintbrush marks with layers of collaged canvas which was inspired by the North West Territories or coloured shapes defining space to conjure up a beach picnic in Vancouver or an admired Cezanne bridge that was my inspiration to create a journey in a forest, all this imagery becomes on their own, a metaphor. I create compositions with vivid colours and a variety of shapes and patterns. From observed reality such as in one of my paintings of two people embracing plus another painting of a group of musicians playing in a piano quartet, each painting is joy and bustle in city life. I experienced revelation, the birth of a metaphor, which can be dramatic and energetic in scope. I re-create or transform an animate or inanimate object into a unique kind of “visual dance” by reassembling the parts or icons of the metaphor to create new compositions. While painting I am acutely aware of classical form, sprinkled with the wit of connectivity.