ABOUT MELANIE
Melanie Meyer, an artist and photographer, now living a life of constant movement and migration between the city of Cape Town and the desolate, unpopulated wilderness areas of Southern Africa.
When I am not creating art or walking in the bush with my camera, I find further peace in my garden, spending valued time with my loving family and relaxing with my devoted pets.
As an animal lover and nature enthusiast I am constantly inspired by the world around me. I hold a deep sense of awe and reverence for the everyday gifts of magic that surrounds us all, whether within our inner city gardens and streets or “out there” in the wilderness; it is this same awe inspiring wonder that fuels my daily work.
Growing up on a smallholding, on the outskirts of Somerset West, a small town in the Western Cape, South Africa, I was essentially an unseen child, always playing alone in my magical wild garden and hiding with my imaginary companions in the golden fields surrounding my home.
Raised in an environment where imagination and isolated discovery was my safe place, where running away to hide in the fields and forest to find solace and peace, my childhood experience ignited and shaped my deep connection to nature and the universe.
This revered and deep connection to that which is more than myself has become the source of my creative energy. Mother Earth – my safe place.
My deep connection with the Earth and all of life’s light and shadows began in this isolated world, and now flows into all my paintings, drawings, sculptures and photography.
My creative journey in later years was enriched by a diverse background that spans horticulture, landscape design and architecture.
After completing High School, relieved to be free of mind numbing dogma, I studied horticulture and landscape design at Cape Tech, Cape Town where my appreciation and awe for the natural world deepened. However, over time I realised a needed to focus my studies in a manner where I hoped to make a greater difference and social impact within society. I was acutely aware of the political and economical injustices in the world, particularly within the South African context. I felt a deepening need to study further, completing both BAS and B.ARCH Architectural degrees from the University of Cape Town with distinction. I worked as an architect and project manager, running my own private practice, Meyer Architects. Over the next decade and a half I completed multiple projects ranging from large industrial and commercial works to private homes and restaurants.
My most cherished projects however, were the ones that had more significant political and social impact, those being both city and rural clinics and community centres.
I loved my work as an architect and yet, even as I dedicated myself to designing spaces that enhanced the lives of so many individuals, I discovered that art offered an even greater purpose as well as a more intuitive and spiritually resonant path for me.
My new direction and further studies in art as a form of therapy, including the Bridging Polarities Through Art programme and my work and training as an Art Process Facilitator, have allowed me to blend the rational with the intuitive in my creative practice.
I have sometimes been called the Mystery Artist; the photographer who sees the unseen, the artist who paints Light; my work is mostly ethereal, emerging always from a place of deep meditation and contemplation. I have embraced my love for the more creative side of life, discovering too that art is an ancient spiritual way of being, for all Beings. Creative Art is a way to Universal Connectedness; the ultimate way to connect with all others and with Self. A way to live life fully, beyond all fear.
I am now an established, internationally selling Artist. In addition I offer curatorship for a selected group of individuals. I offer art process facilitation and workshops on how to overcome fear and grow trust in our universally connected creative process.
I am mother to two wonderful, now adult, daughters and wife to the most awesome man. We love to leave the city and travel through the wilder areas of Southern Africa, exploring the remote and least inhabited places whenever possible in isolated togetherness. Here we are energised and refuelled. In this wilderness, we connect to that deep inner resource of creativity – Mother Earth and ourselves.
Thank you to the Universe and to All within for bringing me home.
“I’m slowly learning that even if I react, it won’t change anything, it won’t make people suddenly love and respect me, it won’t magically change their minds.
Sometimes it’s better to just let things be, let people go, don’t fight for closure, don’t ask for explanations, don’t chase answers and don’t expect people to understand where you’re coming from.
I’m slowly learning that life is better lived when you don’t centre it on what’s happening around you and centre it on what’s happening inside you instead.”
Rumi