Melissa Peck

It was when she was nine years old when that Melissa Peck knew for sure she was an artist. She was sitting at the kitchen table drawing a picture of a little girl. At the time she was so impressed with herself and her little drawing she hopped up and ran around the house yelling “I am an Artist! I am an Artist!”

Peck remembers the first time she saw the art of the “Masters” on an art history tour in Europe. Tears surfaced as she stood in front of their paintings. Filled with an overwhelming feeling of belonging, she had found her peers. “I saw the heights to which my passion could be taken and I had a vision of who I wanted to become.”

In 1997 after 5 different jobs in one year, and trying to figure out what she was going to do, Peck finally sat down at her tiny drafting table and started to create paintings, which are still dear to her. “It was important for me to not be in a classroom comparing my work to other artists, or trying to please my professor. I wasn’t concerned about how realistic I was drawing I was simply creating for me. As I evolve and change, my work is a direct reflection of that. Whatever I am passionate about at the time will show up in my work.”

“I feel that I am just now beginning to create the work that I have been working toward all these years. I am grateful for every bad painting I have painted to get here. Julia Cameron said ‘Remember by being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance over time to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.’”

“I do not feel that I am at any destination, simply on a journey. It is exciting to watch my work evolve. Every group of new paintings I love more than the last. Art is not what I do, but who I am. My paintings reflect my experience of and passion for life. My work has more meaning to me now than ever before. I am going to a new depth as I leave the young girl behind and gain the wisdom of becoming a woman.”