MELISSA WEINMAN American
Growing up in her mother’s ceramic and painting studio, Melissa Weinman discovered early on the transformative power of art, a discovery that would guide her through years of rigorous study and shape her into one of the Northwest’s most thoughtful contemporary painters.
Melissa Weinman was born in Minnesota and grew up immersed in art through her mother’s painting and ceramic studio on the prairies of southwest Minnesota, where close observation of natural phenomena shaped her early sensibility. She graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College in 1982 with a double major in Creative Visual Arts and Chinese Studies, and spent her junior year at Princeton University studying painting and regularly visiting New York museums and galleries.
She earned her M.F.A. from the University of Southern California’s School of Fine Arts, studying painting and printmaking under teachers including Ruth Weisberg and Ron Rizk. Early in her career she worked in Brooklyn, New York, and taught as an Assistant Professor at the University of Richmond and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She later moved to the Pacific Northwest, teaching for fourteen years at the University of Puget Sound and leaving in 2004 as a Full Professor. More recently, she has taught atelier-style, solvent-free oil painting in her studio and at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle.
Weinman’s work encompasses landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and figurative or spiritual themes, often focusing on translucent, changing subjects such as fruit, flowers, water, and clouds. In the 1980s she concentrated on skyscapes and waterscapes; in the 1990s her work shifted toward portraiture and reinterpretations of saints and martyrs, blending traditional religious imagery with contemporary contexts. Over time, her art evolved from conceptual exploration into deeply devotional and spiritually grounded work.
Her practice is rooted in traditional methods, using mahogany panels, linen, cotton, or paper, and building oil paintings through grisaille underpainting and layered color. She devotes significant time to each major work, reflecting a disciplined studio approach. Weinman has exhibited widely across the United States, with solo museum exhibitions at the Frye Art Museum, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and the Arnot Art Museum. She divides her time between en plein air painting and studio work in Tacoma, Washington, creating paintings that invite viewers to rediscover wonder and transcendence in everyday life.