Today we’d like to introduce you to Melanie Pankau.
Hi Melanie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been floating around the upper midwest for most of my life. Originally born in Milwaukee, I moved to Minneapolis in 1995 to attend Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) where I graduated with my BFA. While at MCAD, I had the opportunity to study at the Bauhaus Universität which was a life changing experience as a young artist. I went on to receive my MFA from the University of WI-Milwaukee in 2011. I also lived in Chicago for seven years and briefly in Detroit. Over the years, to help support my studio practice I have worked in various contemporary art galleries, museums, and art foundations. My current studio practice is an exploration of the inner life through meditation and painting. My meditation practice began about 15 years ago when I went through a yoga teaching training program. As I learned more about and practiced meditation, I began to notice and observe similarities between the state of mind during meditation and creativity. Since then I’ve been working to fully fuse these two practices.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The most challenging part is time. I always like to say I work at the pace of my hand. I am a very slow painter, and I only create about 5-8 acrylic paintings a year. My process is very labor intensive, and the paintings go through many evolutions before settling on their final state. Painting has its own sense of time both in the making and viewing. When I walk into the studio, I really have to switch gears away from my daily fragmented digital interactions to this unrushed pace of making. The images are not in a hurry! It is a very different sensation and takes a conscious effort to really slow down.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
For the past decade or so, I have been blending my painting and meditation practices. What has drawn me to painting and meditation is that they are both somatic experiences of listening, observing, and feeling the sensations in the body. My meditation practice accompanied by the years of working with my hands to create paintings has become my way of understanding, reflecting, and finding meaning in my life experiences. Every morning I meditate for 20-30 minutes where I strive to cultivate a deep sense of stillness. After meditation, I draw in my sketchbook. The sketches are like a type of inner dictation. These rough geometric drawings and patterns are the basis for the compositions in the paintings. With my meditation practice I’m studying and engaging with the energetic body (a more subtle layer of consciousness). I’m interested in how this energy manifests itself into forms, particularly geometric forms, and how these structures can be containers or symbols for meditative qualities of quietude, stillness, and our multidimensional nature. I use the language of abstraction to counter our culture’s normalized states of fragmentation, individualism, and extractivism. My work speaks to another way of seeing and being in the world that is unifying, interconnected, and non-hierarchical. Our culture is very focused on the external world and meditation has revealed to me a rich inner universe. When the mind stills, there’s clarity and connection. My intention is that the geometric forms will emanate calm and a balanced state of being.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
The last few years, I’ve become increasingly interested in symbols, archetypes, and dream interpretation. I’ve been hooked on this podcast, “This Jungian Life” where three Jungian analysts discuss Jung’s ideas and how they relate to our times. Another podcast that I often listen to in the studio is “Living Myth” with psychologist Michael Meade. In this podcast, Meade provides a mythical perspective to contemporary culture. I’m drawn to both of these podcasts because they offer a more expansive and broader perspective. They pull me out of the minutiae of daily life and place me in a larger continuum much like my meditation practice.
Pricing:
- Pricing available upon request. Please inquire through the artist’s website or McCormick Gallery, Chicago.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.melaniepankau.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melaniepankau
