Melissa Delprete
mtn space gallery is pleased to present Little Gems, a solo exhibition of work by Melissa DelPrete.
As the founder and owner of mtn space, DelPrete has spent the past four years cultivating a platform for emerging and established artists, fostering conversations that push the boundaries of contemporary practice. With Little Gems, she turns the lens inward, offering a body of work that is both deeply personal and fundamentally universal — an exploration of time, labor, and the act of making as an act of being.
“Drawing is an act of return: a return to material, to instinct, to the immediacy of mark-making as both record and residue of presence. These works emerge in the space between deliberation and impulse, where gestural movements intersect with the quiet logic of composition. They do not seek resolution so much as they document process — each piece a fragment of a larger, ongoing negotiation between control and letting go.
Materially, the work resists preciousness. Found paper — deadstock, aged, repurposed — functions as both substrate and conceptual anchor, embedding the drawings with histories that predate my intervention. Water-based media allow for fluidity, for a responsiveness to surface that is both intuitive and unpredictable. Ink seeps and stains, crayon accumulates in dense, tactile gestures, graphite lingers in half-formed notations. The compositions emerge through layering, erasure, and excavation, embracing a state of constant flux.
For years, my practice was oriented toward large-scale painting — works that operated within the spatial and institutional demands of scale. These drawings, by contrast, lean into intimacy. They exist at a human scale, activated by proximity, by a viewer’s ability to engage with their physicality on an immediate, tactile level. They resist monumentality, privileging presence over spectacle, accumulation over singularity.
In that sense, Little Gems is as much about process as it is about objecthood. It is an archive of gesture, a series of micro-decisions that trace the rhythms of making. The work is durational — both in its execution and in the way it holds time, allowing traces of past movements to coexist with the immediacy of the present mark.
These drawings are not about resolution. They are about staying in the work. About allowing for re-entry, re-engagement, the possibility of return.”
About Melissa DelPrete — Rooted in traditions of craft and the formal elements of abstract expressionism, Melissa DelPrete’s work combines organic atmospheric color fields and intuitive calligraphic mark-making. Her process is heavily informed by the archetypal qualities of chaos, and her compositions mimic the rhythmic patterns and currents of animate energy that span the natural world, metropolises, and the human psyche. Ultimately, she seeks to capture the metaphysical and ground it in physical form. Originally from New York, DelPrete received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston and her MS in Art Education from LIU Post in Long Island. She is currently based in Lake Worth Beach, FL.
Melissa DelPrete: Little Gems will be on view from April 5 - May 24, 2025. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, April 5, from 6-8pm.