The best of Melissa Chandon's paintings
perforate the viewer with a mix of psychological unease and
sensual delight. Muller Ranch I, painted in 2005, for
example, illustrates this well. On the one hand, it offers
the beholder all the warm air, stillness, flattened
landscape and open space that can sometimes make the central
valley seem a welcome reprieve from the bustle and fog of
bay and coast. On the other, it presents us with that same
penetrating sensual pleasure--the momentary bodily
experience of a slower, simpler life--as if at a remove, as
if seen from the other side of the protective barrier of
polarizing sunglasses. This distancing gives the seductive
documentary vitality that runs through many of Chandon's
rural and agricultural paintings a pop twist, drawing us
back from our momentary salt-of-the-earth experience to more
urbane and cultured reflections. In this way her work
strikes the affective balance that characterizes any
meaningful realism: it calls up deep-seated desires with an
appeal to a world beyond our own while ever reminding us of
the world here and now out of which those desires are born.
__
Blake Stimson, Ph. D, Professor of Art
History, University of California, Davis
Field of
interest: 20th Century and Contemporary Art, History of
Photography, Historiography and Critical Theory
The surfaces of Chandon's paintings make her traditional
subject matter seem contemporary. Yet, these same surfaces,
along with Chandon's moody colors, evoke a sense of
melancholy and mystery, serving as hazy veils that cloud our
memory.
__ Scott A. Shields, Ph.D., Chief Curator, Crocker
Art Museum
Melissa Chandon’s oil paintings are
rendered with a passionate physical language that evokes a deep
feeling of isolation and loneliness amidst the welcoming
Sacramento Valley air. The intentional use of negative space via
shape and shadow create an aura of solitude and privacy to which
the viewer is slowly drawn into the environment. These compressed landscapes suggest
a place where our most interpersonal memories dwell, and
reinforce the seclusion necessary to reflect upon this feeling.
The flatness of the space requires the need to hesitate just on
the surface to echo upon the intimate setting. As in Road 31,
the warm glow from the golden field draws the viewer closer,
allowing for deep contemplation while the dark shadow in the
foreground requires one to pause prior to facing the desperate
remoteness of emotional aloneness.
Chandon’s representation of the
conventional mid-20th century automobile and farm
equipment reflect her traditional deserted landscape where a
feeling of isolation persists. These vanishing subjects of
beloved rural society bolster a need to ponder the past and
create a personal connection with this rare slice of Americana.
The deep shadows amongst the warm valley sky illuminate the lone
utilitarian subject, and draw the viewer in for further
consideration and personal recollections.
Melissa Chandon’s
interpretation of the vast Sacramento Valley landscape is
extraordinary, taking on the individual need for isolation and
reflection amidst the disappearing history that is so familiar.
__Jemima J. Harr, Museum Director-Curator, Morris Graves
Museum of Art, Eureka, California
Onto the isolation,
loneliness and emptiness of these images we project our own
populated and happy film clips, even adding the missing
sounds: the squeals of children at the water's edge; the
"ding! ding!" of the bell when a car drove into the gas
station; the motorcycles revving their engines in "Easy
Rider." The power of visual art to activate all our senses
through only one— our sight— is truly a magnificent
phenomenon. Chandon's shiny colorful images definitely do
the trick.
__Hollis Walker, Albuquerque Journal