Congratulations to our Town Hall Artists for January and February, 2019, Maryanne Rupp and Melissa Imossi.
“Taking the Back Road”, Pastel
Maryanne Rupp
Maryanne is a Killingworth resident and has been active in the greater shoreline community of artists. A nurse by profession, she is retired and paints and exhibits often; pastel is her primary medium. Most of her art education has been through on-going classes at Lyme Art Association and workshops taught by nationally known pastelists. Joann Ballinger has been her primary pastel teacher and mentor. Lou Bonamarte, Richard McKinley, Liz Haywood-Sullivan, Chris Ivers and Karen Winslow have all provided wonderful instruction and encouragement.
She holds membership in many artist organizations: Essex Art Association, Academic Artists Association, Madison Art Society, Clinton Art Society, Lyme Art Association, holding Elected Artist status in the latter three. She also holds Signature Membership in the Connecticut Pastel Society. Having been chosen to exhibit in various juried shows, she is delighted and to have won prizes in many of them, including two Best of Show in Connecticut Pastel Society’s Member Exhibition and two major pastel awards from Academic Artists. A palette she painted a few years ago graces one of the Florence Griswold Christmas trees.
Her paintings are representational and try to capture a certain quality of light that transforms an often-mundane subject or landscape into a thing of beauty.
“Last Blush”, Oil
Melissa Imossi
“Shining Bright Web”, Oil
Melissa Imossi
Melissa Imossi is an award-winning contemporary realist painter. She was born in 1969 on Long island, NY. There she acquired a passion for the natural world and ways of capturing the essence of that beauty through art. She is known for her close-up studies of nature, where she examines the graphic quality of a single subject, emphasizing symmetry, repetition and rhythm. By focusing on the flow of light on these forms, she seems to direct the viewers into the painting itself, transporting them into another world.
Melissa’s unique style has been honed through years of study and discipline. After taking classes at the Art Students League in NY, Melissa realized that she wanted to focus on art full-time and traveled to Florence, Italy where she studied Old Master techniques at the prestigious Angel Academy of Art. In 2005, after only 2 years at the Academy, Melissa won “First Place” in The Artist Magazines student competition in 2005. In 2006, she was a “Finalist” in the Artist Magazine Annual Competition, competing against 10,000 entries. She continued to hone her skills and develop her style at two other studios in Florence before returning to the Northeast.
While back in the States in 2010, she won an “Award of Merit” from Joan Young, curator of the Guggenheim Museum in 2010. Recently, she won “Best in Show” in the American Art Awards juried by 25 of the leading galleries in the U.S. In 2014, she won a “Williams Prize for Drawing Award” and the “Graphic Arts Award” at the “Academic Association 68th Annual National Exhibit” in 2018. She is an elected member of the prestigious Lyme Art Association and Madison Art Society. Melissa is now living in Madison, CT, with her artist husband, Iacopo Pasquinelli, and their daughter Bianca.