howdy, i’m Mel
an adventure artist
helping humans persist
with their art as
a wellness practice
finally make the jump
from consuming
to creating.
ready to sit down and build a studio practice that helps you feel deliciously alive?
together we’ll find your strengths, areas of struggle, and i’ll develop custom assignments compassionate to your real life.
what are my clients
and students saying?
10/10 would recommend working with Mel! They helped determine best practices for our educational nature series. They empowered us to create fun and meaningful videos while troubleshooting problems in pre- and post-production. We look forward to working with them again in the future!"
Maddie & Cydney of Deep Roots KC
(craft tutoring clients)
"Mel has been my north star throughout my journey as an artist. Through their experience, expertise, and kind heart, I have been able to make art I could not have imagined three months ago—when we first began our sessions together. My lessons have all been tailored to my interests and goals as a creative."
payton s. (craft tutoring client)
"Mel is a genius, not only in the art side, but also in the tech side and that is the perfect combination to be the right person to help you clean up your digital space and create better digital record-keeping and systems to help feed your creative practice. Tech-focused spaces won't help you with creating something that serves the art, and I haven't seen any art spaces helping with the digital and organisational side of your practice. Mel shows you how to do both and you walk away with a working system that feeds your thinking and creative practice with exactly what interests you. Take the time now to set something up that will continue to be generative years into the future."
percy s. (former student)
Persistent Bloom
is a podcast about re-wilding our art to persist in making as a wellness practice and an act of resistance.
we’ll question how status-quo systems, strategies, and ways of being an artist need to be re-molded to fit our real lives.
this podcast explores adaptation, chronic illness, and normalizing the rest or fallow period our bloom phases need.
by listening you’ll dismiss the pull of stagnation, connect with creative prompts, and find new ways of looking at the world through art.
ai- free guarantee
at no point during your work with me will i utilize any form of generative ai.
human creativity is too precious to offload to a chat bot. everything i create for you will be crafted through my 14 years of teaching expertise with your human creativity in mind.
now in my life:
it’s november, so i am hard at work finishing commissions, finalizing the last details on zines, and adding new art to my online shop
A calm summer night in Humboldt captured in oil. The soft gold of the hills of an inner-mountain valley received the cool respite of the coastal fog. I loved capturing this moment in the Coast Redwood forest and it’s a perfect reminder of the simple beauty of life outside.
Oil on Clayboard Panel. 7” x 5”
This listing is unframed, but add optional framing to get it ready for your walls and easy gifting!
The snag, a dead tree larger than a human body, is also a mother in the Sequoia National Forest. This painting is inspired by a wildfire sunset, a horror in sherbet hues. These towering dead trees have been spotted — in high-intensity burn areas — birthing immense new groves of Giant Sequoias. The work of The John Muir project is studying and protecting these snag mothers and their ways of forming new kin.
Watercolor & Gouache on Arches Cotton Paper
2.75” x 3.75”
2026