Colorful Portraits and captured moments of everyday life
Fall 1999
(Translation of German newspaper article)
Melinda Hürzeler
Melinda Hürzeler is 18 years old and lives in Pontresina. She was born in the Kanton Aargau
(CH) but at 5 years of age, her family moved to the Engadin. She went to school in Pontresina
and is now in her third year of her apprenticeship as a draftsman in Samedan. In her free time
she engages in her favorite hobby, drawing. She used to draw mainly with pencil or pen, drawing
people, landscapes, fantasies or moments of everyday life. Because her Dutch mother also has painting
in her blood, she could learn a lot from her. Ever since they discussed Abstraction in her draftsman
school, she started to enjoy using strong Neocolors in her paintings. She discovered how characters in
portraits could be brought out with simple color planes. Bob Marley, James Dean, Laurel & Hardy,
The Beatles are only a few famous faces that Melinda Hürzeler has painted colorful portraits of
without them seeming kitschy. Other objects, such as an old Pirates ship on troubled waters becomes
modern looking with these strong colors. All her paintings develop from Ideas and often change again
during the working process.
How does a portrait painting develop? She only needs a picture of the person and then draws a regular
pencil sketch first. As soon as the character sketch looks right, she emphasizes the shadow planes
with lines in pen. The pencil sketch then gets erased and the remaining planes get colored with Neocolor.
Amazingly, this last phase takes the most time. Sometimes she sits for an hour in front of the painting,
thinking about which colors to use. In her mind she combines the harmonizing colors before putting it on
the portrait. "One wrong color and the character is not right", says the young woman about her portraits.
She has a couple of paintings in a box which were messed up because of a wrong color. In February 1999,
the young artist exhibited her paintings for the first time at the Hotel San Gian in St.Moritz, where she
was very successful. The joyful and swinging paintings, which reflect the spontaneous and open personality
of the artist, marveled many and quite a few people got a portrait of themselves. Now she's very excited
about her exhibition in January and February 2000 at the Hotel Waldhaus am See in St.Moritz. When asked
if she has plans to pursue an Arts career, a one year ago she stated that it was just a hobby, but now
everything looks different. Still she does not want to commit to anything, but she might always change
her mind again. "I shall see what happens", she concludes.
