Melissa English campbell
Melissa English Campbell.
Melissa English Campbell is the CAMP Gallery's June Artist of The Month.
By merging the act of painting in dialogue with repetitive systems of weaving, she creates picture planes where structural and geometric patterns intersect with dematerializing painted compositions. Campbell’s woven works - constructed with acrylic gouache, dye, yarn, a loom, and at times found objects - unite painting and weaving to map layered memories shaped by movement, caregiving, and cultural change.
Stay tuned to see her featured in upcoming exhibitions!
1. Our minds have such interesting ways of running rampant and far. What goes through your head while creating a piece?
Two distinct modes guide my making, though they are deeply interconnected. Before anything material begins, there is a quieter, less visible phase of processing—reflecting on lived experience, what I’ve seen, read, or carried with me over time. I consider what feels specific to my own history and what might resonate more broadly, particularly within shared experiences of womanhood. From there, the work shifts into a structured mode of planning. I map out compositions, work through geometry and measurement, take inventory, and develop color. From there, the work shifts into a structured mode of planning. I map out compositions, work through geometry and measurement, take inventory, and develop color.
2. You've previously talked about shifting from place to place and culture to culture. Is there one culture or place that most affected your art, your process, etc?
No single place or culture defines my work. While I identify with Western culture, as a child I spent a great deal of time in Eastern religious communities where I absorbed the saturated colors and atmospheric intensity of temple spaces. Those early impressions remain embedded in my visual language—not as direct references, but as lingering sensibilities around color, rhythm, and presence.
My strongest memories are not of any one place, but of leaving. I remember California with fondness, but also Holland and Scotland. I found Iowa challenging, but have made life-long friendships from there. Mainly, my process has been shaped by a life of movement. That experience of continual adjustment—of learning systems, patterns, and expectations, and then carrying them elsewhere—has had the most lasting impact on my process. While visual influences such as European folk patterning inform my use of geometry and repetition, my work ultimately emerges from the instability of translation rather than from any fixed cultural origin.
3. If a collector buys one of your pieces, for example, "Angel Spinning," and asks for your input on where they should place it, what would you advise?
I think of my pieces as a kind of quiet company—present, holding space. They are layered both through the weaving process and also in how the paint is applied and therefore unfold gently, revealing themselves to those who choose to linger but also working as a source of lively color and pattern when lingering is not an option. They do not need to be displayed under glass so their surfaces absorb sound and soften light, creating a subtle shift in the atmosphere of a room.
I imagine them living where life unfolds at an unhurried pace: beside a chair where reading happens, near a table where the day is planned over morning coffee, or in rooms shaped by conversation. They also feel at home in transitional spaces such as an entry way, where they can mark the passage from one space into another.