**CLOSED** Melanie Lan – Between Being

Underground Gallery

2nd Friday Art Walk Receptions:
* March 13 / April 10, 5:00 – 8:00 pm  ##CANCELED##

All Art Works Downtown galleries will be closed through shelter-in-place order

Exhibition Dates:  March 13 – May 30

[Pictured: Hiding, Holding Playing, Praying © Melanie Lan (detail)]

I am fascinated by the mythology of shape-shifting. My paintings often depict humans or animals in mid-transformation. I use this transitional imagery as a visual language to explore mental health and healing, examining how people adapt in order to thrive.

My art practice incorporates the hypothesis that human beings are just as sensitive as other species. Some creatures will only mate at the light of the full moon, and my paintings explore the possibility that humans are just as sensitive in immeasurable ways: sensitive to the feelings of others, sensitive to the words we hear and the ways people treat us, sensitive to the weight of inequalities.

I do my best to pay tribute to the sensitive creatures, the ones who are affected by the push and pull of the moon, and the people who shape-shift to stay alive.

Melanie Lan is a first generation Taiwanese-American painter. She has been awarded residencies at FB AIR Program, Free Columbia, the Vermont Studio Center, and most recently at Fish Factory Creative Centre where she will spend the summer of 2020 in Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland. Currently she is based in San Francisco, California and holds an MFA from the Burren College of Art at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a BA from Fairhaven College at Western Washington University.