Date:  June 1, 2023  |   Story: Stephanie Maxwell Newton  |   Photography: Rett Peek and courtesy of Melissa Griffith  |  

Looking at Melissa Griffith’s paintings is like pulling back the cloudy curtain of fog to peer into a secret garden. This washed-out, airy effect is one the artist attributes to her upbringing in the Mississippi Delta. “It’s such a humid area, so that’s kind of why my work has a gauzy, humid look to it,” she says.

Melissa recalls her first large-scale piece of work: a painting she made around age 18 that still hangs at her mother’s house. However, it wasn’t until about a decade ago that she started to seriously pursue her career as an artist. Since then, she’s relocated from Chicago to Bentonville and found a fresh font of inspiration in her Arkansas surroundings. “The topography of this area and all the trees, it’s just beautiful,” she says. “It’s really inspired a lot of my landscapes, which before were a little bit flat and low with a big sky, because that’s what I grew up with. In the Delta, you’ve got fields that go on forever and ever.”

In “Diaphanous Petals,” a recent work that’s part of her Flora series, the subject matter is more macro. “I try to capture a dappled light effect on leaves, almost like an abstract fantasy garden scene,” she says. By overlapping thin layers of acrylic and oil paints while letting some sections of paint drip and wiping others away, she creates an ethereal composition that suits its melodic name. This final step, naming a piece, is one Melissa admits is challenging for her: “It’s difficult to put to words something that comes from within,” she says.

Melissa’s work is available through Cobblestone & Vine in Bentonville and the Art Collective Gallery in Rogers. Visit melissaabidegriffithart.com for more information.

Painting featured above: “Diaphanous Petals,” 36” x 36” acrylic and oil on gallery-wrapped canvas