The Humming Lion

Kreh Mellick is an artist living and working in Asheville, North Carolina. She received her BFA in Illustration from Maine College of Art and was a CORE fellow at Penland School of Crafts. Kreh’s works on paper show an interest in women, nature, and domesticity as well as the unseen magic and energies that whirl around all living things. She works primarily with gouache and watercolor on paper, hand-cut and layered in reassembled environments. She combines complex, decorative patterns with airy, minimalist, ethereal landscapes.

Artist Statement
My drawings represent an ever-evolving need to relate fictions on paper. In their current iteration I draw technical inspiration from folk art — cut-paper watercolors, quilts and weathervanes. Employing static motifs and repeat imagery I strive to create a vocabulary using icons based in tradition. It is my effort to relate my interest in woman, nature, domesticity and power of work and home, as well as the unseen magic and energies that whirl around all things living.

Cover image
Kreh Mellick, Lion and Goose Egg. Watercolor and cut paper, 2024.