Melinda Harper

Born 1965, Darwin, Australia.

Harper began her career in Melbourne with her first exhibition at Pinacotheca in 1987 but this was a time not without its difficulties. “The challenge is to continue. I am an artist who makes a lot of work and there have been many periods where financial limitations have been both limiting and frustrating. I think most artists experience times in their career where it is difficult to balance living and making work,” says Harper. “As a young artist I had great peer support and there was a seriousness about my generation that, looking back, I appreciate.”

Throughout her career, Harper has always maintained a strong and recognisable aesthetic. Harper says, “My painting is about colour and form, and their relationship. I am interested in what one colour does to another colour, the weight of a colour and the feeling of a colour. Colour is very complex; I am looking and responding to what I see and what interests me. In the last few years I have been looking at colour in the landscape. I do love a long drive and walking.”

Harper has always developed her practice through her own personal experiences, creating work based on her own individual modes of viewing. She continues, “There is also an element of the process being organic and changing.”

(extract by Melissa Pesa, Artist Profile)