Melissa Barbieri (b.1961, Fairfield, CT)

Over the course of four decades, Melissa Barbieri has created an extraordinary oeuvre of representational and contemporary naturalist art. Her epic paintings, grand in scale and rich in meaning, connect personal experiences with a multitude of cross-disciplinary references that range from the primal to the intellectually profound. Her ability to identify the continuities between present and past, land and sea, and freedom and tradition, have led her to reimagine the genres of portraiture, still life, history painting, scientific illustration, and, most recently, the visual and conceptual relationships between image and word. A classically-trained painter, influenced by the art of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as by Velázquez and the Renaissance masters, Barbieri has been awarded numerous solo exhibitions, an artist’s residency, and, in 2019, a major exhibition at the Lyman Allyn Museum of Art in New London, Connecticut. Her artwork is included in many private collections throughout the United States, and is featured in several public venues. Having lived and worked in California, Florida, Texas, and New Mexico, Barbieri currently maintains an active studio in Essex, Connecticut.