A Shift in Memory

Mel Aliendi

Acrylic on canvas, framed in flooded gum

43 x 43 cm

2026

Mel and I met at the Henry Jones Art Prize in 2025, where we were both finalists, and I’ve followed her work ever since. Her paintings are completely led by colour in the most joyful, instinctive way.

What I really admire is her fearless approach to making—there’s a real sense of freedom in how she builds, layers, and even paints over her work when it feels right. You can feel that energy and movement in the surface, and the way she lets intuition guide each decision.

Her work is vibrant and full of life, with abstracted forms that often drift into a kind of imagined still life. It’s playful, bold, and a reminder of just how powerful colour can be in shifting the mood of a space.

Artist Bio

Mel Aliendi is a self-taught artist who lives and paints from her small bedroom studio in South Arm, Tasmania. Her paintings are born from curiosity and a search for moments that catch the eye. Happy accidents and blurred edges remain, evidence of the human hand and a reminder of beauty being found in an imperfect world. Mel is drawn to colour and its ability to evoke feeling. Layered with vivid hues and texture, her work explores intuitive mark-making and expressive gesture, guided by intentional looking and a search for rhythm, balance and resolution. Recurring subjects such as pots and plants reflect Mel’s love of domestic space and her confessed homebody nature. Larger landscape works—filled with trees, palms, and small imagined dwellings—shift toward memory and an imagined sense of place. Mel seeks to create paintings that feel contemporary and unique, bringing warmth, colour, and joy into the home and to the viewer. Her fascination with the creative process continues to evolve through experimentation and intuition, forever painting as both practice and way of life. Mel’s paintings are available through Handmark Gallery, where she will present her first solo exhibition later this year.

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To purchase this work please contact Harriet Links through her website.