Melanie Vote: Equity’s Sheltering Artist-in-Residence

Melanie Vote, Left Door Washhouse, 2019, Oil on wood, 64 × 29 in

By Michael Gormley

I recall, as if it were a dream, a visit long ago to the Musée Picasso in Paris during a summer study aboard program (was there ever such a thing).  The museum housed a significant collection of Picasso’s drawings, studies and personal effects that had been donated by the artist’s family at his bequest.  Prominently displayed,  these fragmentary traces of a creative life offered an intimate behind the curtain view of the artist’s processes.  Cleverly and generously, Picasso had managed to stage forever the intimacy and privilege of an informal visit to his studio.

Melanie Vote, Evidence, 2020, Oil on wood, 12 × 12 in

That museum visit singularly inspired an interest in fine art processes that subsequently informed a career trajectory in art publishing and curatorial practice.  For over thirty years I have remained intrigued by how and why artists make art.  In  these tumultuous times those same questions have taken on a sense of drastic urgency.  Why does art continue apace even in the face of chilling uncertainty—if not perhaps to spite that uncertainty?

Melanie Vote’s recently closed exhibition at Equity Gallery titled “The Washhouse: Nothing Ever Happened Here” opened within days of New York City’s pandemic shuttering.  She took to visiting the gallery, largely alone with a body of work planned, labored and obsessed over for two years in preparation for a public viewing.  There was a story that needed to be told.  As the days became weeks and the weeks became months, the gallery became Vote’s art studio and the installed work an inspiring  plein air landscape to be painted.  Just like what Picasso would have done.

Melanie Vote, Exterior, plein air, 2019, Oil on paper, 12 × 16 in

We have for your viewing produced a short video of documenting the creation of a painting Vote created while in residence at the gallery.  On an immediate level,  the reel displays an accomplished artist at work.  It is compelling; an artfully crafted stream of images and words that betray the thinking, decisions, mishaps and emotions that inform art making.   But more importantly,  and likely unbeknownst to the artist, the video isn’t just about loosening the grip of an obsession long enough to seize upon an aesthetic expression to tame it--though that would be enough.   In this instance, Vote’s painting becomes performative, not just technically demonstrative,  as she re- stages and amplifies the narrative the exhibition aimed to air in the first place ---just in case you missed it.  Uncannily prophetic and yet timeless,  Vote’s work points to the extreme fragility of human existence ---and by extension the ailing ecosystems we are bound to.   In Vote’s universe, we are all hapless and lonely pioneers living and dying and leaving behind telling fragments of our valiant efforts to trudge on.  Just like Picasso.

Installation image of “The Washhouse: Nothing Ever Happened Here” courtesy of Bill Massey

You may search for Vote’s work for sale on NYAE’s online art market.

Sale inquires may be addressed to michael@nyartistsequity.org.