The Intimacy of a Journal

Melinda Stickney Gibson 

The brushstrokes and marks in the paintings of Melinda Stickney-Gibson parallel the marks of life and of nature.  Sometimes it’s frozen earth with a crust of snow or ice and sometimes it’s like a summer meadow full of the sun and flowers. But no matter what temperature it is in Stickney-Gibson’s work I feel the paint and the act of painting is always passionate.

Stickney-Gibson now lives in the Catskills outside of New York City in the solitude of nature.  She states,  “My work always begins with the question of relationships; the messy human ones, and those found in the natural world, which are then translated into my version of the formal artistic ones (color, line, composition, material, scale, etc…).”

I feel that Stickney-Gibson’s work has the intimacy of a journal.   It’s watching her thoughts and reflections as she strokes and marks the surface of her pictures with her brush.  One of the pleasures of looking at art is the sharing of the delight of being and I get that from the work of Melinda Stickney-Gibson.                     By Marsha Ralls