info & contact
Melanie Rothschild is a self-taught artist and a native of Los Angeles. She began the Paint & Air series - consisting of spilled, dried and hung paint - in 2007, which was born from a mistake.
She's had solo shows in California, New York and Colorado and has been in a myriad of group shows, with work in many private and corporate collections. In 2014, North Light Books published her book, The Art of Mistakes.
Melanie is a deep believer that art is a fundamental earmark of humanness and as such, a constant reminder of our human ability for creative thinking. To that end, art takes on an almost sacred quality.
She earned a bachelor's from UCLA in Ethnic Arts/Anthropology, during which time she developed tremendous reverence for the fact that people around the globe, regardless of how meager their resources, were driven to find ways to make art.
This powerful notion buoyed her own drive to make art. She began working with non-traditional methods, using not only brushes but the handles of broken brushes, the edges of cardboard, a rolling pin - just about anything in arm's reach which could be used to apply paint. She created a line of interior design accessories. Her boxes, picture frames and small tables were sold nationwide in design stores and museum shops and enabled her to make a living as an artist.
Eventually, her functional pieces segued into completely non-functional work. Her first group show with painting was at the Brand Library Gallery. It was in preparation for that show that she accidentally spilled an entire gallon of paint on her workshop floor. Unsure of how to deal with the mess, she decided to leave it alone, figuring it would be easier to deal with after it had dried. When she came back days later to chisel it off the floor, instead of it breaking apart in chunks as she'd anticipated, it stayed in one mass, forming a huge hide of paint. This gave birth to the idea of deliberately spilling paint, letting it dry, peeling it up and hanging it. It was a profound moment for her.
Fascinated by the concept of how ideas come into being, Melanie returned to school and in 2011 she completed a master's degree in the Study of Creativity, at Buffalo State College. In 2014, North Light Books published her book, "The Art of Mistakes: Unexpected Painting Techniques & the Practice of Creative Thinking." The book documents her functional work as well as some early Paint & Air pieces. It also discusses her deep feelings on the notion of our unique human ability for creativity, the idea that artistic expression is only one form of creative thinking and that art is the silo where creativity can be revered.
Her 12-word artist's statement: Art is there to remind us that we can think for ourselves.
contact:
rothschildmelanie@gmail.com
Gallery At Michael Warren Contemporary, Denver
