Melissa Doherty

Melissa Doherty is best known for her rich and near photo-real aerial landscapes of deep, velvet green trees amidst stark rooftops, compositions that often resemble architectural models. She says, “I’m interested in how we perceive landscape, and the history of landscape tradition with its assertions and sentiments of identity and power. The grand tradition of landscape painting looks outward at frontier space. By contrast, an “engagement” with the aerial view offers a re-presentation of the landscape. As we look downward to a piece of uncompromised introspection, conventional views of the world are revisited. The manufactured heroism found in traditional landscape is supplanted in these works by a manufactured intimacy.”