HEMMENS, Melissa

1974 - ?

Melissa Rosalind Hemmens was born at Portsmouth, Hampshire on 15 May 1974, daughter of David Ernest Hemmens, an accountant, and his wife Lilian G. née Peattie, who married at Portsmouth in 1966. Melissa studied at Bay House High School, Gosport, Hampshire and was an art teacher in Secondary schools in London for 13 years, studying for an M.A. in Printmaking at the Cambridge School of Art. About 2003 Melissa moved from West London to Suffolk where she is a printmaker specialising in relief prints working with woodcut being inspired by the landscape and the people. Her first series of woodcut prints portrays life in a rural village with the images and characters portrayed, as going about their daily lives with the artist as a spectator. The second series concentrated on illustrating the stereotypes of the people that live in diverse types of homes in Britain, with each image representing a different letter of the alphabet and included the type of housing and objects or animals that reflect the tastes and class of the people that might live that home. Melissa lives in Hessett, Bury St Edmund's, Suffolk and has exhibited her work at The Lounge, Bury St Edmund's; Suffolk Art Society, Ipswich; The Highwayman's Gallery, Risby; The Tostock Art Show; Wyken Vineyard; Lion House Gallery, Lavenham; Edmund Gallery, Bury St Edmund's; Needham Market Art Show; Fisher Theatre Gallery, Bungay and at MA Printmakers Show and at R K Burt Gallery, London and elsewhere.

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Works by This Artist