Three concurrent rooms. A studio organized not by chronology but by color and breath. Saturated palmscapes, anonymous figure studies in graphite, and submerged swimmers held in flat fields of pool water.
Banana leaves and travelers' palms held against fields of saturated, almost flat color. The plant is rendered carefully; the ground unapologetically pop.
Each canvas places a botanical foreground against a flat field of saturated color, the plant rendered slowly and the ground pulled into a single declarative tone.
A note on color The painting begins as drawing, but it ends as weather. Placeholder. Replace with words from Felipe.
Anonymous figures, faces hidden, drawn quietly in graphite on white paper. Bodies that pull inward, that conceal, that hold themselves together in the dark.
A note on the figure The face refused, so the body had to remember. Placeholder. Replace with words from Felipe.
Bodies suspended in fields of pool-water turquoise. Cropped, weightless, half-submerged. Where the Palms paintings push outward into color, the Swimmers float quietly within it.
Felipe Melendrez is a Mexican graphic artist living and working in Miami.
He received his BFA in Fine Art from Florida International University in 2013. His practice ranges from painting and drawing to graphic design and illustration. His work has been displayed in galleries and museums across South Florida and aboard Oceania Cruises vessels worldwide.