December 10- January 9, 2009
Silent Auction To Benefit PAWS/LA Assisting animal guardians in need.
Auction Bidding ends at exhibition closing
Melanie Van Latum’s portraits pop with a hardboiled baroque, neo-noir coterie of haunting, flamboyant heroines. Handsome, sinister, and supremely confident women stare from the canvas with an imperiously mysterious gaze, clearly indicating that no cloister, boudoir, suburb or nursery could ever contain the canny power of their bodies and minds.
Van Latum’s cleverly balanced compositions and high-tension-line lighting conjure a triumphant, intelligent feminine charisma – a mise-en-scene flushed with dizzyingly endless décolletage and the intricate obsessions of coiffure. In playfully provoking erotic traditions, these post-traditionalist paintings resuscitate the vapid, gaping pin-up model to her proper stance as empress, saint, and icon.
About Melanie Van Latum
Melanie earned her BFA in illustration from Art Center College of Design and her MA in Drawing & Painting from Cal State Fullerton. A Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America, Melanie is the only female street painter to win the title of Maestro and several gold medals in both Italy and Germany. Co-Founder of two prominent organizations in the chalk painting world, Street Painting Society and the Street Painting Academy, Melanie has consulted, painted, and held painting workshops for clients in Turkey, Holland, France, Canada and throughout the U.S. Melanie’s fine art work has been exhibited in galleries throughout Southern California.
Van Latum’s cleverly balanced compositions and high-tension-line lighting conjure a triumphant, intelligent feminine charisma – a mise-en-scene flushed with dizzyingly endless décolletage and the intricate obsessions of coiffure. In playfully provoking erotic traditions, these post-traditionalist paintings resuscitate the vapid, gaping pin-up model to her proper stance as empress, saint, and icon.
About Melanie Van Latum
Melanie earned her BFA in illustration from Art Center College of Design and her MA in Drawing & Painting from Cal State Fullerton. A Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America, Melanie is the only female street painter to win the title of Maestro and several gold medals in both Italy and Germany. Co-Founder of two prominent organizations in the chalk painting world, Street Painting Society and the Street Painting Academy, Melanie has consulted, painted, and held painting workshops for clients in Turkey, Holland, France, Canada and throughout the U.S. Melanie’s fine art work has been exhibited in galleries throughout Southern California.
