Melissa Agnes Tychonievich

Melissa Agnes Tychonievich is a trans-masculine (they/them/theirs) contemporary figure painter originally from St. Louis, Missouri. They received their Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting and Art History at the Kansas City Art Institute in 2017, and their Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Miami in 2021. Their work is rooted in the foundational practice of recording perceptual information from observation, specifically figurative drawing and painting from life. They have been featured nationally, including at the H and R Bloch Artspace in Kansas City, Missouri; the Old Courthouse Arts Center in Woodstock, Illinois; the University of Miami Art Gallery in Wynwood; and locally at Framations Gallery, Fontbonne University, the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, and the Angad Arts Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. They currently live with their partner in St. Louis, Missouri, and teach as an Adjunct Professor of Art and Art History at St. Louis Community College and St. Charles Community College. 

Contact Information
Email : melissatychonievich@gmail.com
Instagram: meltychonievich

Artist Statement

I am an Intuitive Realist – a contemporary artist who seeks to create images that reference perceptual reality through the implementation of both traditional and contemporary creative techniques. Through the combination of these practices, I aspire to create a hybrid visual language that is relevant to both observational and non-objective contemporary painting philosophies.

Through this notion of Intuitive Realism, I consider my work to be “Non-Binary” in both imagery and process. I identify as Trans Masculine Non-Binary in my gender expression, and I use “they/them” pronouns. The nuance of how I experience gender outside of the Male-Female societal binary is reflected in how I view myself as an artist and how I fit into the contemporary painting discourse. My figures are queer and non-cisgendered, continuing the theme of questioning categorical thinking in my interpretation of them. The people and places in my paintings are frequently intuitively selected, drawn from my own interpersonal relationships and experiences. With these images, I use my work as a direct reflection of my life experiences, restructured and retold through implicit narrative structures. I am a culmination of every picture, thought, and emotion that anyone has ever evoked within or shared with me, both good and bad, and, through my work, I aim to find balance within all of these themes through visual processing. 

In my painting process, I conceptualize Representational Painting and Non-Objective Painting as two binaries of a Painting Spectrum – with my work existing between the two binaries as reflections of both camps of thought. I define Representational Painting as the process of rendering and articulating three dimensional perceptual information onto a two dimensional surface. Non-Objective Painting references the abstract expressionist ideology of paint becoming its own vehicle of representation. Each individual painting articulates its own place on this spectrum, some leaning more towards one binary or the other.

Similarly to how we collectively invent categories for gender, we also invent categories of contemporary art. The greater western art historical narrative describes past painting stylizations and aesthetic choices as categorical, temporal movements, existing linearly in history one right after the other. This artistic monism eventually gave way to the concept of pluralism and, eventually, to the atemporality of the age of the internet.

The same non-categorical sentiments I experience in my gender expression are echoed within the context of who I am as a contemporary artist. Parts of my process are more traditional, especially when translating perceptual information onto an artistic surface, but other parts are more intuitive. I often consider my canvas a Rosenbergian “arena in which to act” – similar to the philosophies of the Abstract Expressionists. What is different for me is that my arena is not completely non-objective, but instead uses references to the perceptual world as a jumping off point for abstracted mark-making.