Melanie Reese creates abstract, minimal, color-based paintings exploring the act of painting itself through various techniques of layering. Layering occurs through repeated actions of outlining forms by ‘painting’ the negative space with liquid masking tape—a technique adapted from her printmaking experience. The shape of each form is not only informed by the canvas size, but by the way in which the edge of the form interacts with the canvas edge. Melanie received her B.S. from Skidmore College in 2013. During that time she studied at Studio Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence. She completed an artist residency at Elsewhere Studios in 2013 and went on to receive a Post-Baccalaureate certificate from San Francisco Art Institute in 2014. Melanie received her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC in May 2017 and attended the Vermont Studio Center residency in November 2017. Melanie currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Melanie has had solo exhibitions at R&D Studios Ridgewood and Suzette LaValle in Brooklyn, NY. She has also shown in several selected group and juried exhibitions including: Post-Appreciation at the Diego Rivera Gallery at San Francisco Art Institute; Monochrome at Site:Brooklyn, NY; Cognitive Dissidence at Ray Smith Studio in Gowanus, BK; The Map is Not the Territory at the Brooklyn Pfizer Building; the 58th Long Island Artist Exhibition at the Art League of Long Island, NY;Breach at Rabbit Hole Studio in Dumbo, BK; and Unicode at SVA Flatiron Gallery in Chelsea, NY. Mel’s work has been published in New American Paintings Northeast Issue 134, Inside Artists, Studio Visit Magazine, Artwork Archive Blog, Vellum Magazine, THE KIND, and Wallhop.