Melissa Cowper-Smith

Melissa Cowper-Smith is a painter currently living and working at her place, Wildland Gardens, near Morrilton, AR. Originally from Alberta, Canada, she studied art at the University of Victoria, before moving to the United States in 2002 to complete a Masters of Art degree at Hunter college in New York City. While in New York she met her husband James Dow, a philosopher of mind who has an interest in art and aesthetics. The two moved to Arkansas along with their son in 2011. Using permaculture design theories, she developed Wildland Gardens. Melissa grows hundreds of varieties of medicinal, food, fiber, and flower plants. She uses her gardens as both inspiration and material for her work. She has gained mastery in papermaking, often using fiber plants from the garden. Melissa has received many awards for her art including inclusion in the juried Delta Exhibition (Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts), an Individual Artists Fellowship (Arkansas Arts Council), and an Artists Scholarship (Arkansas Committee of the National Museum for Women in the Arts).

ARTIST STATEMENT

Melissa Cowper-Smith uses handmade paper, bold color palettes, and intricate brush strokes to capture the movement and perspective shifts of the landscape. Working to bridge the gap between climate change, memory, and forgetting, Cowper-Smith's work calls attention to the timelessness of nature while exploring clouds, fires, and other phenomena in the world around her. through the exploration of color, line, and form, she generates a narrative between the past, present, and future, building a visual record of the ever-changing nature of the land, and inciting conversations about the immediacy, absurdity, and uncertainty of the human experience in relation to nature.