Melissa Dinwoodie
Melissa Dinwoodie grew up in Armstrong, British Columbia. After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia, Okanagan (2001), where she became passionate about painting in oils, she explored different parts of Canada, including Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver. In every home, she set up a makeshift studio and produced bodies of work to show. She received a degree in Interior Design from the Art Institute of Vancouver (2007) before moving to Vernon, BC, where she now owns and operates LEAP Art Supplies & Gallery.
Dinwoodie’s paintings are primarily figurative and convey pure, intense emotion through unconventional applications of colour, line, and brushwork. Recently, she began investigating negative and positive space as block printing, repeating images onto backgrounds in order to subdue the foreground. This increased emphasis on background elements disrupts preconceived conventions of visual and emotional importance and forces viewers to shift focus and attention back and forth between compositional elements.
Since 2001, Dinwoodie has exhibited in solo and group shows regionally, and her work can be found in the collections of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Okanagan University College. In 2014, she received a Recognition Award at the 16th Annual Painting, Drawing, Photography and Print Juried Online International Art Exhibition hosted by the online gallery Upstream People Gallery, and in 2015, she received an Award of Excellence at the Four Points Contemporary (online gallery) Biannual Competition.
Dinwoodie’s paintings are primarily figurative and convey pure, intense emotion through unconventional applications of colour, line, and brushwork. Recently, she began investigating negative and positive space as block printing, repeating images onto backgrounds in order to subdue the foreground. This increased emphasis on background elements disrupts preconceived conventions of visual and emotional importance and forces viewers to shift focus and attention back and forth between compositional elements.
Since 2001, Dinwoodie has exhibited in solo and group shows regionally, and her work can be found in the collections of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Okanagan University College. In 2014, she received a Recognition Award at the 16th Annual Painting, Drawing, Photography and Print Juried Online International Art Exhibition hosted by the online gallery Upstream People Gallery, and in 2015, she received an Award of Excellence at the Four Points Contemporary (online gallery) Biannual Competition.