Concrete Playground meets artist Melissa Sharplin

Melissa Sharplin tells Concrete Playground's Lara Thomas about the inspiration behind her pop-realist portraits of beautiful women, working for charity and the importance of dreams. Inspired by the glossy pages of fashion magazines, Melissa creates collections of paintings that are testament to her background in fashion and talent for photo-realist painting. Having shifted from Christchurch, Melissa is making her mark on the Auckland art scene with her recent involvement in Safe in Sound charity sneaker event and NZ Fashion Week.

I imagine your work fits really well at fashion week; it's the perfect combination of art and fashion.

Yeah, I was watching some of the models and I was really excited because I recognised some of them. A few of the models I've actually done paintings of, which is quite cool.

Do you follow particular people?

Some of them I'm really attracted to or inspired by and there's a certain kind of look that I like, but there are always new ones coming through. It's also about the photographer – some photographers really nail what I'm looking for.

One of your newer works features a zebra…

Yeah, I did a series of birds which is all sold out now. The next collection I started looking at was power animals; really strong, African animals. I did the zebra and an alligator on this girl's big flower hat.

I'm moving onto a different type of look; which is about fabrics, cultures and mixing it all up. An African-looking girl with a Spanish fan and a kind of hippy-trippy 70s background, just moulding it all together. Now I'm working on a huge painting which has a leopard in the background, resting its paws on the shoulder of the girl in front. She's wearing an Arabian style gold scarf so her eyes are the only thing showing.

What inspired the change?

Well, I guess the bird series was about one layer – the bird, over an image I really liked. With the Black Cockatoo painting, I couldn't see the eyes very well in the photograph I was working from, so I grabbed some eyes from another model. I quite liked that I could do that and I started messing around with it. All of these new paintings are noses and eyes and chins and arms and shoulders from different people. Everything is mashed up, so you can't recognise who or what it is - but she's very beautiful and kind of unusual.

Your work has been described as 'collections' as opposed to series, which seems to be an influence from your fashion background.

Yeah, they are like collections. They go into groups and they change so dramatically each time, it's almost like a different artist, but the same style is always there. In each of my collections there's an exhibition piece; the big major amazing one and then all the others follow different looks or personalities. It's almost like the Spice Girls and everyone's always got their favourite. I can do only 12 -13 paintings a year, so yeah it's definitely like a collection.

When there's an exhibition I find that my collection of paintings fight in the room and you can't hang them together. For some of my buyers who have three or four works, they have to hang them all in separate rooms. So I thought, well what would work with them? Lately I had a dream that I was an abstract painter. In fact it was only last night  that I had this thought; abstract really goes well with them. You can start bringing in the colours and have them in an abstract painting, and it works really well with the environment. I thought maybe for this collection I could have 'Melissa Sharplin and her abstract painting'.

Like a partner of sorts?

Yeah, kind of like light side / dark side, or my two sides pulling against each other. There's one side of me that needs it to be perfect and wants it to look like a photograph, then there's the other side that just wants to let go, get rough, get in there.

Dreams and fashion are obviously important influences and inspiration, are there other things?

Dreams are the major influence. That's why I need my sleep. It's where I get my ideas – it's like I'm working in my sleep! I visited my show for the bird series in a dream. I went to the exhibition and I saw the paintings and I thought, "Wow, that girl is really talented, I wish I could paint like that." I felt like I'd stolen this girl's ideas, but then I realised the paintings were actually images that I'd been collecting, so it must have come from me. Something definitely happens; something downloads when I sleep.

But yeah, fashion magazines, photographers, friends, conversations, lots of things inspire me. Different fabrics, looks, any sort of beauty I just adore. I'm so inspired by so many things I almost can't keep up.

You're not with a gallery, you're out there on your own, how do you make that work?

I have done some gallery shows but I felt like I found the buyers for the work and no new buyers came in through the gallery. I just started putting on shows myself and getting media involved; like getting a jungle and putting it in the Audi showroom, with real parrots. You know, creating sort of like a brouhaha event of sorts where people would come and see the work and it would be something that people really talked about. I would love to get into a public trust and be represented by a gallery at some point; someone that resonates with what I'm doing. In the meantime I'll just keep doing my own thing.

So we'll just have to watch your website to see where you're exhibiting next?

Yeah, I guess so. I don't even know where I'm going to exhibit next! I'm just going to paint a whole lot of stuff and once it's done start the ball rolling. I mean Banksy's exhibition with the elephant sounded great, but I don't know if I'll be able to get an elephant! But yeah, doing things like that is a lot of fun and people don't forget it.

I'm really interested in doing more stuff with charity, it makes me feel really good about life. I think I would almost rather work with One Percent Collective or a charity where half the money goes to them as opposed to a gallery or a PR Company. So that's where I'm heading.