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Melissa Wen Kotzeva

Melissa was born in Houston, TX. After losing her father to Cancer, her Mother remarried and they moved to Guam, her mother’s place of birth. Guam had a huge impact on Melissa’s growth as an artist and as a person. At the age of 13 she moved back to Houston, TX. Where she attended Glassell School of Art, receiving a scholarship. Melissa loves to travel, and believes that to travel is essential to being a great artist. “I think that part of an artists vision, is to have a wide scope or perspective on different cultures, different latitudes, and the interactions that happen to a person taken out of context. I have traveled to Italy and Sardinia, France, from the Pyrenees to Paris and south to the coast.” Melissa said. She has also been to Bulgaria, Sofia to Burgas on the Black Sea, to England, to France, again through Belgium to Amsterdam, Holland and Spain, as well as Puerto Rico, and Canada (Far west and far east).

Art is important to people because it creates a response on a very large
emotional spectrum. Melissa states, “I Love to create art. I love to be
inspired and make a painting, or actually make a plan and work the details out as I go. Art, for me is also problem solving...working out the composition,
using all the principles to find something that is unique to me and who I am.
When I paint I am complete, I am in the moment and of it. I believe it takes
ten to twenty paintings to make a masterpiece, and each masterpiece is a
culmination of who that artist is up to that point, whether understood and
appreciated or not."