Melissa Thorne
Informed by the language of abstraction, Melissa Thorne makes portable and site-specific paintings that use pattern to reference notions of class, feminine subjectivity and social progress. She has exhibited her work internationally.
Biography
Thorne's work addresses multiple formats, including paintings on canvas and paper, and large-scale site-specific wall drawings in ink and watercolor. Her paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions at Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Devin Borden Gallery (Houston), Galerie Anke Schmidt (Cologne) and Rosamund Felsen Gallery (Los Angeles), among others.
Prior to moving to upstate New York, she lived and worked in Los Angeles for over a decade and taught at CalArts, University of Southern California, Otis College of Art and Design, Scripps College, California College of the Arts, and University of California, Riverside. She has received artist residencies at the Ucross Foundation (Wyoming), The Santa Fe Art Institute (New Mexico), The Glassell Core Program (Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas), and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Nebraska). She received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University (1993), and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts (1998). Thorne is the recipient of a 2015 NYFA Fellowship in Painting. She lives and works in Troy, NY and was a visiting faculty member at Bennington for Fall 2016.