Artist Reception and Painting Exhibition for Melissa Chandon: American Holiday

ST. HELENA, CA - Caldwell Snyder is pleased to announce the new exhibition, American Holiday, for Melissa Chandon: Reception with the artist, Saturday, July 11, 4-6pm, exhibition continues through July 31st.

Known for her vivid, pared-down images of classic American scenes, Melissa Chandon deepens her exploration of what she calls “roadside vernacular”—vintage campers, rolling farmland, boats on quiet lakes—in “American Holiday,” her latest series of paintings. “I consider myself to be an abstract realist painter,” she has said. “My work can best be considered Americana meets Pop art.” Among her influences are Edward Hopper, David Hockney, and Wayne Thiebaud, who once took her on as a rare apprentice and has remarked that the “effective synthesis of abstract and representational elements” in her work give it “an intensity and raw graphic power to behold.”

Chandon’s paintings draw from her childhood memories of road trips and her adult fascination with nostalgia. In preparation for her paintings, she travels down backroads and through small towns, immersing herself in the landscape. Armed with her camera, she documents scenes that interest her; out of many snapshots, those that inspire paintings tend to expose the quiet nobility that, as critic Peter London has written in a reflection on her work, “lurks just beneath the surface of common things; noble because [they] are nothing less than incarnations of the American dream.”

A classically trained artist, Chandon has exhibited her paintings at numerous venues around California and the U.S. In addition to corporate and notable private collections, her work is included in the Morgan Flagg Collection at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Morris Graves Museum, the Napa Valley Museum, the Triton Museum of Art, and the University of California, Davis’ Shields Library. She resides in Northern California.