The Arch By Melissa Miller Analysis

This Piece by Melissa Miller, The Arch 1986, draws you in with its extensive energy. The rush strokes of used with the oil paint enforce a chaotic energy within each individual creature. You are immediately pulled in by the left top corner where the light breaks through the clouds and mystic darkness. The contrast in the sky with warm and cool colors is my overall memorable touch to it. It’s great size allows you to almost be a part of it. The feel of the entire work is the calm before or even after the storm. Hints of violet are mixed in with the eerie black storm clouds. More subtle clouds are a beautiful variety shade of turquoise, different where the light breaks through. Light in the painting is not shown with white, but a orange based color that is a creamy looking in some parts but also a vibrant peach. Further back in the distance you see that it has began to rain and the turquoise is dragged down almost in a transparent matter. It could be that the contrast in the sky has a biblical spiritual meaning, where you have the dark clouds of “despair” whereas the light shining through could be “hope of salvation”. I think it’s amazing that the artist titled it The Ark because even though without knowing the title at first you still know what’s going on. The whole two of each animal, …show more content…
The birds in the sky seem alarmed as if they’re just arriving to the scene of the catastrophe. Then it’s sky again, to the ground where a lion and lioness have expression of argument. Behind them is a horse on its hind legs which moves you up to the sky, giving that up and down W-shape flow of attraction to the eye. Across the horses head are more birds in the air, one is way up bringing it to the highest point of the piece, almost the highest climax before the conclusion of a story. Then the flow starts going down again with another bird lower in the sky than the one