Melissa Walker has been winning acclaim with her artwork since high school. Today she can most often be found creating contemporary abstracts and landscapes in acrylic and collage.
Melissa Walker, artist and art educator
Melissa is a National Board Certified art educator with over 25 years experience teaching elementary, middle, high school and adult students. She received a BS degree in Art Education from East Carolina University and a MA degree in Painting and Printmaking from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. She has continued to study painting with well known artists and instructors Robert Burridge, Bob Rankin, Joe Deguilio, Sterling Edwards, and Jack Shields. Melissa is a member of the Pastel Association of North Carolina and the North Carolina Watercolor Association as well as a long time member of the North Carolina Art Education Association. Melissa most recently had a painting published in “Incite, Dreams Realized,the Best of Mixed Media” from North Light Books and in the Spring 2014 issue of “Acrylic Artist”. She has had 3 artist journal pages published in the book, “1000 Artist Journal Pages”, by Dawn DeVries Sokol and is featured in the Student-Teacher Portfolio of the Aug/Sept 2010 issue of School Arts magazine. Melissa recently retired after 25 years of teaching at Randleman High School in Randleman, NC. She now offers art instruction in her studio and art workshops to artists and teachers alike. Her students have won numerous awards and she has inspired many to pursue an art career of their own.
Melissa’s work is influenced by abstract expressionism and incorporates mixed media elements. She loves the intuitive experimentation and discovery involved in creating abstract art. The interaction of colors and shapes on a surface, the tension between lights and darks, the blended edge versus the hard line have long fascinated her. Building layers with collage, and adding gestural lines, as well as journaling and stamping are just some of the techniques she currently incorporates into her art.
Melissa lives in Seagrove, NC with her husband, Ed Walker. Ed is an artist himself and owns Carolina Bronze Sculpture, a fine art bronze casting foundry.