My Story
My name is Melissa. I never had a nickname as a kid, though sometimes dad dropped the ‘a’ and I’d be Meliss. Mel was unavoidable as I moved through high school, and fast forward to today my husband, Alex, and our inner circle call me Melon. My Mini Melon collections are as much a part of me as I am a part of them. Plus the left side of my brain loves the alliteration.
I’m a painter and creative coach living on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria with Alex, our two divine and dynamic little boys, Henry and Theo, and two highly pampered miniature dachshunds. I grew up with space around me, paddocks of grass that browned and sang in the summer breeze. Our family holidays were always by the water. A coastal hamlet where bush gives way to brackish water as it makes its way to the ocean. Embedded in me, I paint stories of the earth. Land, sea and sky. Ebb and flow moments that can be gone in a heartbeat but not before they’ve taken your breath away and left you their echo. I call on the echoes, the moments, and the possibilities.
Creative Career
‘Creative’ is an ambiguous career path and I’ve been sculpting my bespoke version since 2004. With a Bachelor degree in Visual Art and a Masters in Art Therapy I have worked in health, community and inclusive arts sectors. I’ve built my career in arts project development, advocating for the creative practices of others, facilitating art making workshops and seeding community based inclusive arts programs. I was also an Art in Dialysis founding team member, a pioneering art therapy project with Peninsula Health and the Frankston Arts Centre. Now I’m the one you’re calling when you want to fall down the rabbit hole of artmaking and creative process. I love dreaming up projects, breaking them down to their essence and building them up again as a bubble of art making goodness that welcomes people in and nurtures and celebrates creativity. I could talk about this. all. day. From creative conception to finished gold, art and artmaking are my jam. This work is like a 'hat' that fits so well that I don't want to take it off! The first Melissa Banks Studio project out in the world is Creator Co.
My love affair with art and painting has been lifelong. I can remember lining the floor with paper as a kid, sticky taping it together and getting lost in the act of making/drawing/creating something from nothing. And I remember with an echo of elation the way my folks and family received my work
I’m so thankful for my folks, who saw that spark in me and nurtured my passion and skill base from a young age. I began tonal oil painting at 10yrs old and still draw on these traditional foundations each time I enter the studio. The instant the turps jar is cracked I'm transported back to the McClelland Painters Guild. I grew up there. Countless hours spent looking, seeing, colour mixing, adding, taking away, exploring the sculpture park and learning. Learning the Meldrum Method from Fiona Billbrough, I’m grateful, beyond grateful for these solid traditional tonal oil painting foundations.
True Colour Lover
Don’t be fooled by my jeans and basics tee, I’m a true colour lover. I generously pour colour, texture and gesture into my work that absolutely break the ‘don’t touch the art’ rules. My connection to colour and love for colour mixing was grounded in that McClelland oil painting paradise. I learnt to paint what I saw, not what I thought I saw. A tree is only brown and green until you look and see deeper—violet, burgundy, chartreuse, turquoise, silver. I learnt to see colours for what they are, not for what my preconception of the subject’s colour might be. From this point of view, every moment is a colour lovers dream!
My lightbulb moment came after the birth of my second son. In the career that I built and loved, I’d lost my own identity as an artist. Hello, November 5th, 2019. My birthday, nursing my second born, and knowing it was time to make my move I committed to my first Mini Melon collection, gave myself a launch date and go!
Beyond my early years training, now when I paint, I paint what I feel, or I paint what I remember through the lens of that feeling. For sure, my colours are romanticised and exaggerated to meet the intensity of my feeling, but it's only a short bow to draw. The iteration of my artwork today is absolutely authentic to me. It rolls out of my hands. That's what we do as creative beings. We integrate the gold from our lessons and inspirations and iterate it with our own creative voice.
I'm thankful that I'll always be riding the ripple effect of my experiential echoes with boundless gratitude for the patterns that repeat and repeat in nature. There is truly nothing better than falling into studio flow and feeling my hands become the vessel for my creativity. Just start making, you don’t know what you might find.
Embedded in me, I paint stories of the earth. Land, sea and sky. Ebb and flow moments that can be gone in a heartbeat but not before they’ve taken your breath away and left you their echo. I call on the echoes, the moments, and the possibilities.
The Beach Calls Me
Painting gives me the space and freedom to thank the beauty of the world we live in. Trusting in my experiences, training, inspiration and innate creativity to holler back when I call gives me the creative courage to intuitively follow the flow of an artwork.
The beach calls me.
The native flowers that sustain our bushlands call me.
The textures that are repeated again and again in nature call me.
The colour that we see beyond what we think we see calls me.
Working with creatives and watching their "ah-ha!' moments link together calls me. To share all of this beauty, to render moments that live on and evoke memories of a time that was, is golden.