Melissa Miller Nece from Florida |
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Melissa Miller Nece is regarded as one of the foremost colored pencil artists in Florida. Her enthusiasm and humor have made her a favorite speaker for arts groups, and she has inspired many others to try colored pencils through her classes and workshops. She was a workshop presenter at the 2005 national convention of the Colored Pencil Society of America. Her commissioned piece for the Cumberland Pencil Co. in England has been used in promoting their Signature watercolor pencils. A featured artist in the book Creative Colored Pencil Portraits by Vera Curnow, she has also been published in two national magazines and other books on colored pencil and portraiture.
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| Melissa is a Signature Member of the Colored Pencil Society of America, past President and newsletter editor for CPSA District Chapter 113, and a member of the Florida Artist Group. She is newsletter editor for and has been a Board Member of the Professional Association of Visual Artists. She is also a board member of the Miniature Art Society of Florida.
Melissa has a BFA from Lake Erie College and has been teaching drawing, colored pencil, and oil and acrylic painting at the Dunedin Fine Art Center since 1990. She has also taught college level graphic design and worked in commercial art. Her work, which includes many portrait commissions, is in numerous corporate and private collections. |
About her work, she says:
My interest is in accurately portraying the details of a subject. This does not mean I don't edit or make changes, but I avoid vague approximations. I want to be specific to the person, the place. Believable details trigger a viewer's sense of recognition, calling up the viewer's own memories and allowing other associations to pour forth.
Thus, I seek to portray something very, very specific, which leads to a meaning that becomes universal. The fact that I use drawing or painting media, that is, the idea that it is done by hand, emphasizes the significance of the subject. It is my hope that this produces an emotional response beyond the impressive but clinical accuracy of a technologically produced image. Ultimately, the real subject of my work is an appreciation of our common experience, and I hope I am able to share that with my viewer. |
