Art in the bar – Melanie Wotton: Waiting for the Time of Day

Art in the bar

Melanie Wotton: Waiting for the Time of Day

14/11/25 – 20/12/25

I am an abstract painter working primarily in acrylic and oils. My work arises from a fascination of numinous moments- a heightened experience of landscape and place intensified through sea swimming, forest bathing and walking, which help to create a deep sense of connection. I wait for significant moments when a space might be revealed by transformative light, a discovery of unusual forms, objects, colour or by spacial clues.

Working in the studio, these experiences become the starting point for drawings and paintings alongside photographs, collected objects and collected mediated images of landscape from social media, film and TV. These are abstract landscapes as places of memory, recent and distant, imagined or artificial.

In terms of my process, I work initially with free-flowing gestural forms, incorporating chance and half-chance painterly events as I build up layers. I allow forms to emerge and recede, and often edit and rework paintings over some time.

Melanie Wotton is a Swansea based artist and member of the elysium gallery studios community. Recent exhibitions

include:

Elsewhere Here, The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, Cork, Ireland

(Re)discovering me, Mission Gallery Swansea

Unity, The Turner House Contemporary Open, Penarth

Arcadia Spring Open, Made Gallery Cardiff