Wilde II 1998

Curator: Welcome. We’re looking at “Wilde II,” a 1998 acrylic on canvas work by Melissa Meyer. Editor: The overlaying of brushstrokes gives a light feeling, and yet there is real weight from the build-up of colors and texture. The entire plane vibrates with potential energy. Curator: Exactly! Consider Meyer's deliberate approach. Each stroke represents a physical act, a deposit of pigment, layering hues and textures with this thick impasto that demonstrates the artistic labor invested. We see an intimate dance between control and chance, intention and the materiality of the medium itself. Editor: I see almost glyph-like forms, echoing patterns found in nature, perhaps coded natural cycles. And that muted, almost peach background reads like the fading echo of past events. Look how certain blocks of color like blues and reds act almost like linguistic emphasis in these shapes. Curator: What interests me is how Meyer challenges our ideas of painting as a discrete, autonomous object. Here the means of production—the brushes, the acrylic—become integral to understanding its visual language. It’s less about an illusion and more about its honest declaration of “making.” Editor: Do you think there’s a correlation between this expressionist methodology and memory encoding itself? Consider how personal memories layer upon one another. Certain strokes call to others across color, space, depth—echoing the subconscious work to preserve and replay. Curator: The layering also demonstrates how painting itself isn't fixed or immutable; how it can always be reworked, overpainted, contested. Look at how color palettes mingle, influence one another. There is always tension that suggests continuous becoming rather than finished conclusion. Editor: Well, this piece inspires a wonderful openness to reinterpretation, like a script one can enact in countless new performances. A painting offering more question than answers. Curator: And what more could we possibly want? A celebration of medium and its physical act offers the means for individual expression that cannot be separated from painting history itself. Editor: Precisely. "Wilde II” provides a space where colors can almost function like active thoughts constantly shifting as they’re filtered and rearranged.