MAKING HER MARK
Melissa Gates nurturing a new-found talent, thanks to Bob Ross
The lion staring back at local artist Melissa Gates almost didn’t make it onto canvas. She thought it was destined for her back.
“I’d had this vision in my head for decades,” she says of the great-maned beast, with its one tawny eye and half of a bright white muzzle visible from the edge of the canvas. “I thought I would get it as a tattoo on my back, but this is how it turned out.”
To her husband’s great relief, she adds, laughing.
Gates describes the 16-by-20 acrylic, titled “Lion,” as her first “intentional painting, the first where I decided ‘I’m going to paint something.’”
And with little more than a can-do spirit inspired by years of watching the genial host of “The Joy of Painting” dab together landscapes on public television, she picked up a brush and made her mark.
“I thought, “I’m going to channel me some Bob Ross,’” says Gates, 47. “I found a style pretty quickly [but] I really had no idea that I had this in me.”
That was two years ago. Since then, her talent has been rewarded with a second-place finish and $2,500 prize for “Cherry Blossoms Lg” from among 3,500 submissions in the 2016 Passion To Perform international art contest and the selection of three works by the Association for Visual Arts for its spring juried show. This week, a collection of her paintings goes on view at Reflections Gallery.
Her style is impressionistic, with an aim to capture the momentary, sensory effect of a scene. She uses stippling to create an illusion of deep details and layers of pigment to coax the image off the canvas. Drama and emotion are evoked by juxtaposing an absence of color with intense color, her artist statement explains.
Nature figures prominently in Gates’ works, particularly trees and animals. The creatures range from bison to horses to snowy egrets, almost all of which seem to be making eye contact, as if they and the viewer have unexpectedly encountered each other and are mutually mesmerized.
“I feel like [the viewer is] up close and personal with this animal. … It’s the oncein-a-lifetime moments we all want to experience,” she explains.
Sometimes even the treescapes seem to offer more than meets the eye. “The Wood,” for instance, offers a shrouded scene of a forest that could easily be hiding more of those arresting animals, if you only knew where to look.
“It’s so foggy and everything, really anything could be going on in there,” Gates says.
Another continuing theme for Gates has been a series depicting cherry blossoms.
Her first, on a 24-by-36 canvas, was claimed by her mother when Gates offered her a choice of paintings as a gift.
“She picked that one, which I knew she would, and then it was gone and I missed it so terribly,” she remembers. “So I did another one.”
A friend saw that painting on Facebook and asked for it. So Gates painted another. It placed in the Passion To Perform contest, and she had to send it away to receive the prize money.
“So now I’ve done No. 4. It’s not gone yet,” she says, though it’s possible it will sell in the Reflections show.
“I think people really just like that red against the gray and the black and white tones. It really pops,” she says.
Though Gates still considers painting a hobby — “I’m an accountant by trade” — she is heartened by the early response to her work.
Husband Mark also paints, though he prefers abstracts. His only prior experience was painting a couple of pieces to help stage a house he was trying to sell. After Melissa’s foray into her new-found hobby, he picked up a brush again as well. They often combine their works for display in regional art shows and at Chattanooga Market on Sundays.
Gates says she sometimes considers branching into other styles and mediums, but isn’t ready to commit to that big of a change. Oils would be “a blurry mess,” and watercolors “I can’t control.” And despite Mark’s proficiency, her attempts at abstracts have been a disappointment.
“I feel like I’m pretty content where I’m at right now,” she says. “I’m so new and still have so many ideas.”
Contact Lisa Denton at ldenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6281.