MELINDA MOREY Blue Lau, 2006 oil and alkyd on wood panel 16 x 36 inches Price: $3,000 Courtesy of the artist

Melinda Morey was born in 1963 in Torrance, California, and raised on the island of Kaua‘i. She received her BFA with highest honors from the University of Arizona and her MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University. In 1991, she founded Studio O.M.O, which produces custom murals. Morey currently divides her time between New York and Lawai, Kaua‘i.

Morey is an accomplished waterwoman, and her relationship with the ocean influences her current work as well as her fundamental perceptions of life. Blue Lau, suggestive of the activity of hukilau, combines Morey’s strength in rendering the figures, intent on pulling the long rope adorned with leaves, with an atmospheric environment that lends a note of fantasy, as the figures seem to float in and on the sea.