Melissa Thorne

Areas of Expertise: Painting and Drawing

Melissa Thorne is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art and Painting and Drawing Area Head. As a painter, her practice includes multiple formats, from paintings on canvas and paper, to large-scale site-specific wall drawings in ink and watercolor. Her work has been shown widely in solo and group exhibitions at Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery (Houston), Galerie Rolf Ricke (Cologne), Galerie Schmidt Maczollek (Cologne), and Rosamund Felsen Gallery (Los Angeles) among many others. Her work has also been included in exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery at Barnsdall, and Optical Project (Houston).

Prior to joining University at Albany, she lived and worked in Los Angeles for 15 years and taught at CalArts, University of Southern California, Otis College of Art and Design, Scripps College and University of California, Riverside. She has received artist residencies at the Ucross Foundation (Wyoming), The Santa Fe Art Institute (New Mexico), The Glassell Core Program (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas), and the Bemis Center (Nebraska). She is represented by Galerie Schmidt Maczollek (Cologne, Germany), and Devin Borden Gallery (Houston, TX).

Melissa Thorne received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University (1993), and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts (1998).