For centuries, artists have found inspiration in the colours and soft light of the European landscape, and artist Corinne Melanie is no different. Having visited the continent in early 2020, she found herself enamoured with the region’s bright skies and lush colours, and, when confined to her home as we all were later that year, she journeyed back through her art.
Corinne’s practice began long before this fateful trip. “The start of my art practice is blurry,” she says, “because I feel like I’ve been creating art for as long as I can remember.” In saying that, however, the velvety quality of the European sunshine did mark a turn in her subject matter. The tall stacks of clouds that populate Turner’s works and the soft petals that preoccupied Rachel Ruysch find new form in Corinne’s studio, tucked amongst the Yarra Ranges.
The artist uses a blend of traditional and digital painting processes, always beginning with a stylus and tablet to sketch out the soft contours of her subjects. Sometimes these works stand on their own, a spray of flowers emerging in a whirl of colour and purposeful mark-making. More often however the artist uses the digital work as a base for a composition, bringing in paint and various collage elements.
Currently, Corinne’s favoured material is Japanese mulberry paper, the artist saying that it “creates what looks almost like a sculptural effect on the paintings and dries in a beautiful, translucent way that lets the layers underneath show through”. This sense of depth and structure is important to the artist when choosing materials, pushing the digital medium in new and innovative directions. Corinne has also begun experimenting with dichroic iridescent films, though they are, in the artist’s words, “finnicky” to work with. These layers alter as the viewer’s perspective change and echo the idiosyncrasies of light that are so fundamental to the artist’s aesthetic ambitions.
Within Corinne’s work, we see classical subjects merging with distinctly modern approaches to artmaking. Digital artmaking intertwines with traditional methods, the artist fusing the past and present to create timeless pieces. She presents us with serene, bucolic visions filled with texture and light, conveying the enduring power of the European countryside.
Above: Artist Corinne Melanie. Photo: Twinewood Studio. Courtesy: the artist.
Corinne Melanie, Bora Bora Landscape, 2023. Limited edition print, 120 x 90cm. Courtesy: the artist.
Corinne Melanie, Chroma Cloud 3 Iridescence, 2023. Mixed media on canvas, 120 x 160cm. Courtesy: the artist.
Corinne Melanie, The Maldives I, 2023. Mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50cm. Courtesy: the artist.