Melissa Chandon

The reality of the changing American landscape hit home for Melissa Chandon when she returned to a small Utah town last year to re-photograph a 1950s-era drive-in restaurant she had just painted. The Snow King was gone, demolished, the locals told her. Chandon was stunned. In that moment she determined the Snow King would be the first in a series of paintings recording remaining icons of mid-century American life. Since then she has sought out and portrayed abandoned roadside diners and gas stations, old lifeguard shacks, rusty farm equipment, and aging VW Bugs.

These vestiges of an earlier time have a personal resonance for the 54-year-old Davis, CA artist, whose treasured childhood memories include cross-country family road trips. Other summers were spent at her grandfathers’ ranches, impressing the northern California landscape upon her psyche. With art training at several institutions, most notably under painter Wayne Thiebeaud at the University of California/Davis, Chandon approaches the canvas with a bold, graphic style. Her subjects are removed from the environment and painted in isolation on a strongly hued background, suggesting their enduring status as memory objects for countless Americans.

“When we look around, these buildings have been on our visual horizon since childhood,” Chandon reflects. “I want to draw attention to the things in our culture that are part of who we are, that brought us to where we are today.”