Melissa Boughey
Artist's Statement
Over many years I have built a responsive, intuitive language about landscape and my response to it. Sketches and ideas are gathered from living a seasonal rural life, plus the occasional road trip or balmy holiday. The vista from the studio, walking the dog down the tree-lined drive, the reflections of paperbarks in the wetlands, ocean swimming, catching the early morning light – therein lies a rich tapestry of all the things that inspire and hold my attention.
Although these experiences are unique in themselves, there is a commonality in what drives the work and how it develops: choice of colour, high tones, juxtaposition, and evidence of intuitive, responsive mark-making. The paintings need to speak to me, to have an innate energy or hum, and have some familiarity with the natural world. If this recognition becomes too overt then I will mask it and go deeper into abstraction, always looking to surprise myself. Being process driven the work becomes in and of itself.
I want to leave space for the viewer to interpret the work to find their own meaning. To sit with it, feel something, and hopefully consider the natural world and their place within it.
Biography
Melissa Boughey (b. 1972) completed a Bachelor of Arts (ART) Curtin University WA (1994) and then moved south (near Kwoorabup/Denmark WA) where she has lived and worked for 30 years, and raised a family, a small-farm business, and a dedicated studio practice.
Melissa currently works from her converted farm-shed studio, overlooking pristine rehabilitated wetlands, and takes inspiration from her close daily interactions of living and working a seasonal life. Observation, through her plein air adventures, is at the heart of her emotive drawing and gestural abstract oil painting practice, but she is enthral to the materiality of paint, surface tension and creating opportunities to surprise herself and move into the realms of the unknown, finding joy and wonder there.
Melissa exhibits regularly in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth and has been selected as a finalist in a number of national shows including the Muswellbrook Art Prize (2021 & 2019), the Paul Guest Prize for Drawing (2016), Kogarah Art Prize (2015), Albany Art Prize (2015), Lloyd Rees Landscape Prize (2015) & Fleurieu Art Prize (2011). She was awarded the 2025 Omnia Art Prize (VIC) by esteemed judge Sophie Travers.
