Melissa Bolger is an artist who uses paint, colored pencil and graphite to render the details of objects that have deep meaning in our lives and relationships. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows across the San Francisco Bay Area in venues that include Root Division, Oakland Museum of California, and the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been reviewed in publications that include the Contra Costa Times and East Bay Express.
Bolger is a California native and was raised in outside of Redding, CA near Whiskeytown Lake where her parents settled on a remote piece of property, built a house, and raised their family off the grid. Her mother sewed the family’s clothes and other household items, like the Afghan that is at the heart of Bolger’s current art practice. For Bolger, the woods were her playground and she grew up hiking, fishing, hunting, riding horses and panning for gold. Some of her early artistic influences grew from those days, living off a dirt road overlooking a canyon and creek, when do-it-yourself was the only way to get things done. Today, she merges the techniques of craft with fine art in her interpretative portraits, paintings and drawings.
Bolger lived for a short time in Oregon and New York, but Northern California always felt like home. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where she focused on Painting and Drawing. Bolger lives and works in Oakland.
