My work expresses my experiences of the "thin spaces"--places where the sacred and mundane overlap. I enjoy exploring artistic and worldly paradoxes: material/spiritual, macro/micro, stillness/change, concrete/abstract. I work in a variety of media: primarily mixed-media, drawing, and painting. These allow me to explore the use of a one-dimensional medium to evoke texture, depth, and space. I mostly strive to create images of beauty.

A graduate of the Corcoran College of Art & Design, Melanie Newlon is an award-winning contemporary artist.

Her new work is a series of assemblages. It is abstract and made from natural dyes, pigments, and infusions and exposed to natural forces (solar/lunar, wind/rain, or buried in the earth). Materials used include: dyes and paints made from natural materials such as henna, turmeric, coffee grounds, herbal infusions, charcoal, clay, and other pigments. Newlon's work is dynamic, embodying the transformative processes of nature.

Newlon uses natural elements and materials to remind the community of our connectedness--to one another as well as to nature. Her art implies the elemental nature of everything around us, and our direct relationship to nature and the community, through the choice of materials and execution. Melanie creates strong contemporary art, made from and influenced by the natural world.

Melanie Newlon is an Artist Member of GRACE (Greater Reston Arts Center), McLean Project for the Arts (MPA), Virginians for the Arts, League of Reston Artists, the Corcoran College of Art & Design, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.