Hard Water
Oil on Polyester, Framed
109.5 X 99cm
Expert from Artist statement:
Melisah May’s practice explores domesticity, maternal experience, and the quiet chaos embedded in everyday household life. Using familiar domestic tools—brushing, scrubbing, rubbing, washing, dripping, and polishing—she transforms acts of care into physical mark-making, reflecting the repetitive, cyclical rhythms of maintaining a home and raising a child.
Her choice of polyester canvas, reminiscent of household relics, becomes a surface she erases and rebuilds, creating layered depths that speak to lived experience. Autobiographical content runs throughout her work, capturing memory and inherited maternal trauma. Gesture and colour are applied instinctively—particularly pink, which she embraces as a symbol of strength—to convey emotional and physical narratives tied to motherhood and identity.
Influenced by the female Abstract Expressionists of 1950s New York, May works with spontaneity and emotion, allowing the canvas to become a site of exploration. In this process, she gives visibility to the unseen aspects of domestic life, transforming the mundane into a powerful visual language. Her work invites connection through shared experiences of care, family history, and the resilience found in the everyday.
Hard Water
Oil on Polyester, Framed
109.5 X 99cm
Expert from Artist statement:
Melisah May’s practice explores domesticity, maternal experience, and the quiet chaos embedded in everyday household life. Using familiar domestic tools—brushing, scrubbing, rubbing, washing, dripping, and polishing—she transforms acts of care into physical mark-making, reflecting the repetitive, cyclical rhythms of maintaining a home and raising a child.
Her choice of polyester canvas, reminiscent of household relics, becomes a surface she erases and rebuilds, creating layered depths that speak to lived experience. Autobiographical content runs throughout her work, capturing memory and inherited maternal trauma. Gesture and colour are applied instinctively—particularly pink, which she embraces as a symbol of strength—to convey emotional and physical narratives tied to motherhood and identity.
Influenced by the female Abstract Expressionists of 1950s New York, May works with spontaneity and emotion, allowing the canvas to become a site of exploration. In this process, she gives visibility to the unseen aspects of domestic life, transforming the mundane into a powerful visual language. Her work invites connection through shared experiences of care, family history, and the resilience found in the everyday.
