Melanie Pankau

Melanie Pankau, 'Pivot', 2024, Acrylic on panel, 38 x 40.5cm

Melanie Pankau, 'Pivot', 2024, Acrylic on panel, 38 x 40.5cm

Melanie Pankau’s practice as a painter is guided by her daily meditation practice followed by a process of automatic drawing where the geometric forms and diagrammatic structures in her work unfold. For over a decade she has studied various meditation traditions and techniques and integrates this parallel practice into her paintings that both embody and reveal a contemplative consciousness. Within her process, she translates information from alternative sources and unseen forces into forms that are containers or symbols for meditative qualities of quietude, stillness, and our multidimensional nature. The crux of her work centers around using the language of abstraction to counter the normative states of self and culture that she experiences as fragmented and individualist. Through the investigations of geometric forms, Pankau strives to create compositions that emanate stillness and a balanced state.

Melanie Pankau received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1999, her MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 2011, and studied at the Bauhaus Universtät in Weimar, Germany. Her work has been shown in regional and national exhibitions at venues including: Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN; Thomas Barry Fine Arts, Minneapolis, MN; South Bend Regional Museum of Art, South Bend, IN; Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN; TuckUnder Pavilion, Minneapolis, MN; McCormick Gallery, Chicago, IL and art fairs Art Miami, FL, and EXPO Chicago, IL. She has participated in several artist residency programs including the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Pankau is a recipient of a Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs Community Arts Assistance Program Grant, a Metropolitan Arts Council Next Step Grant, and grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her work is represented by McCormick Gallery in Chicago.