About
Melinda currently lives and works in Canberra, Australia. She completed her undergraduate studies in Asian Studies and Visual Arts at the Australian National University in 2009 before spending four years living and studying in Kyoto, Japan funded by a scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).
In 2015 Melinda completed a Masters of Visual Arts at Kyoto Seika University, focusing on the traditional techniques of kata-zome and yu-zen dyeing. Her focus during her time in Japan was learning traditional methods of hand-dyeing and then applying these to contemporary imagery and themes of Australian nature.
Melinda is interested in ideas about the natural environment and our relationships with it. She often draws on the motif of the weed, and has an ongoing series Beautiful Weeds. In these works, she creates portraits of the various noxious, troublesome and unwelcome plants we call weeds, noting that the term ‘weed’ is not botanical but based on concerns for the economy and emotion.
Melinda Heal. Photo(c) 2022 Adam McGrath
Another recurring theme in her work is the complexity of environments which are found at the margins: riverbanks, suburban fringes and borders of nature reserves. Here we find plants and animal species thriving wherever they find the space. Considerations of what is ‘native’ and ‘introduced’ are blurred. For Melinda, these spaces are in many ways ‘authentic’ Australian landscapes and she attempts to recreate these on paper and textiles.
Melinda also experiments with natural materials including pigments and dyes sourced from the environment. Since 2018, she has been incorporating local pigments into her work, embedding colour from the environment into her artworks. She also utilises natural dye colours extracted from Eucalyptus species including Eucalyptus cinerea.
Melinda continues to create work that seeks to elevate the ‘ordinary’ in the natural world around her, drawing on the traditional dye techniques from Japan but also adding her own technical innovations and contemporary expressions. Her works on fabric and paper are a unique and tactile distillation of the Australian natural environment.