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Marcio Melo is a Brazilian painter who lives in Canada, exhibiting for the third time at Onda. His bold and colorful figurative art, ranging from stylized to realistic, has gathered collectors from the Portland public. The new series of paintings called "Everyday Magic" includes people and animals, many with fantastic or spiritual imagery as elements. Melo works in watercolor, acrylics, oils and conté crayon on paper and canvas.
In Brazil, Melo worked in architecture and design, mainly in heritage preservation in the four-century-old cities of Recife and Olinda. Since dedicating himself to fine art, he has exhibited at his home studio in Quyon, in the Ottawa area, Montreal, in Brazil, USA and Germany. He is represented in galleries in Quebec, Ontario, the USA, and Germany. Melo's paintings are in corporate and private collections in Canada, the USA, Brazil, France, England, Italy, Portugal, China, Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
Melo is well known in the Ottawa area. He has appeared on the CBC television show Rockburn and Company, and has several feature articles in the Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa XPress, Ottawa Sun, Zone Outaouais, Sotaque brasileiro, The Equity, The Pontiac Journal, The West Quebec Post and The Aylmer Bulletin. He was also at the center of a controversy at his show at the National Capital Commission Visitor's Centre in Gatineau Park (1997) when seven paintings from his show were deemed unsuitable by the NCC and were removed. The outpouring of indignation about the censorship and support for his art from the public was overwhelming.
The sculptural works, encaustic on limestone, are by Claudia Cillóniz. The media used are dry pigments, oils and beeswax directly onto the limestone. The way she works is by applying the paint in layers and, once satisfied with the image, she places the slab under the sun for its final fusion. If the end result doesn't work, she starts the whole process over.
Cillóniz is a full time painter with her studio located near Ashland on a mountain. She does her work commuting between the Oregon forest, San Francisco and her native land of Peru. In 1987 she received a BFA from Memphis College of Art in Tennessee, and in 1990 she was awarded a MFA at the University of Texas in San Antonio.
Some of the highlights of her career are in 1994 obtaining a commission to paint a mural for the Capitol Building in Salem, Oregon, and in 1997, art critic Lucy Lippard gave her second place at a national exhibition held in New Mexico. In 2000 she received a Fellowship Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and in 2002 an award of First Place at the Pacific Northwest Exhibition in Medford, which was juried by John Olbrantz. Her paintings are being shown nationally, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artist Gallery represents her work. Other representations include Rogue Gallery and Art Center Rental Gallery, Medford, Oregon, Saatchi Gallery - Your Gallery Artist, London, Artworks-Grants Pass, Oregon and Studio Art Direct.
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