Artist Statement

Working as an artist affords me the freedom to lead a creative life. Photography will always be my first love. The immediacy and capturing a fraction in time is what drew me to the medium and pulled me from print journalism. To see a client light up when looking at the proof book makes the process worth more than any effort. Even with this intense focus on photography, my work is constantly evolving. I travel and take workshops and classes that expand my skills in several aspects of art including photography, painting, and jewelry design. They each impact my work in different ways. The painting is for myself, and painting forces you to really look and see and that makes me a better photographer.

Biography
A photographer, jewelry designer, and painter, Melisse Campbell is based in Louisiana. Campbell has been a professional photographer since 1997 focusing on documentary photography of children and animal portraits and wedding photojournalism. She enjoys developing her creative range through landscape, architectural, and documentary photography. She works across the country.

Campbell has studied photography at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Art with freelance photographers Owen Murphy and Richard Sexton. She has also studied with photographers Michael Book and A.J. Meek at LSU. She continues to study and learn new techniques. She attended a National Geographic Expedition with Bert Fox, Julie Graber and Robb Kendrick at the Sante Fe Workshops in August 2004.

Having worked with jewelry for years and giving her designs as gifts, Campbell began selling her pieces under the name Bejeweled. Natural forms of stones and pearls are paired in conjunction with vintage pieces to create individual pieces of art. Her work is in boutiques across the Southeast. To further her training, she has studied Color and Design with Auseklis Ozols at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Art.

Campbell also paints in oil. She continues to stretch and develop her abilities with painting classes under painter Libby Johnson. By working in more than one medium, the diversity affords Campbell the ability to expand her techniques. The various disciplines cross over with both form and function. They are interwoven on an artistic path.

A 1992 graduate of the University of Mississippi with a Bachelor of Art in History and Southern Studies, Campbell won the Gray-Coterie Award from the university for her documentary video and research on the late photographer, Fonville Winans. She earned her Master of Mass Communication from Louisiana State University in 1996.