Melissa Wilkinson

Region: West

My work is built on an interest in social commentary and the undercurrents of visual culture. I attempt to investigate their greater coercive potential through the self conscious, meditative act of drawing and painting. My use of mediation and the reproducible source reinforces my own understanding of post modernity and the ubiquity of the photographic image in culture today, while manifesting itself in an abstracted photorealist painting style. I am interested in uncovering a manipulated collective consciousness by recreating a pre-consumed, transmogrified image. It is through reinterpretation, mediation, manipulation, and context that I change their meanings.