Affordable Art Fair NYC, Spring 2025

Mel Reese (b. 1991) is an abstract formalist painter based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts and a BS from Skidmore College. She has completed artist residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Elsewhere Studios, and JX Farms.

Reese recently had a solo show at Warnes Contemporary Gallery (Brooklyn, NY) and has exhibited widely throughout the United States, including at Collar Works (Troy, NY), Deanna Evans Projects TROVE (online), and THE GALLERY by Odo (New York, NY).

Her work has been featured in several publications, including New American Paintings (Northeast Issue 134), New American Painting Featured Artists, Inside Artists, Studio Visit Magazine, and New Visionary Magazine.

Reese lives and works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with her husband and their baby son.

Reese's work exists between the familiar and the intangible. Rooted in imagined landscapes, they trace the contours of land, body, and mind to evoke the ephemeral immediacy and precarious nature of existing in today’s socio-political climate. As a woman living in Trump's vision of America, Reese’s paintings tell a story of the ongoing battle between progress and destruction. Each piece carries a delicate fragility, illuminated by a looming darkness—suggesting that at any moment, the landscape might split open and consume the viewer entirely.

Utilizing an array of painting and drawing media, including acrylic paint, Caran d’Ache, and pigment sticks, Reese manipulates materials to create rich textures, depth, and intricate visual moments. These elements combine to form quiet yet ominous compositions, where tension and beauty coexist. Reese’s work presents a complex dichotomy, precariously poised between the human experience and a crumbling world, held together in a search for meaning and beauty.