Kirk-Bear Canyon Library invites you to an exhibit by local artist Melanie Montes, on display until February 28, 2025.
Artist Statement:
Melanie Montes is a painter from El Paso, Texas. Using pastel colors and fun subject matter, she creates images that appear cute and bubbly but portray darker narratives. She enjoys mixing the pretty and the creepy to create humorous works that tell stories about innocence, femininity, beauty, and misfortune. Her paintings are set in a post-apocalyptic world that was destroyed by nuclear wars, where society is reemerging slightly mutated. In colorful wastelands, deformed humans live amongst gigantic radioactive bugs trying to continue the human race. Although they suggest the destruction of Earth as we know it, these paintings offer an optimistic take on the end of the world: a new beginning after destruction.
Images courtesy of the artist
