Chalton Gallery is delighted to present the exhibition of Melissa Kime: Do you think I'm Pretty? Kime finished her MA in painting at The Royal College of Art last year and she was awarded the Year's Gordon Luton Prize for Fine Art from the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers after being selected from all 2015 graduates of The Royal College of Art, The Royal Academy Schools and The Slade. In 2014 she was selected for The New Bloomberg Contemporaries Exhibition. She's also taking part in group exhibition in Mexico City in February.

People inhabit my paintings; I hunt for characters from my past and cling onto those from the present. Through the use of intricate patterns and jumbled lines, I have created an idealised space that becomes a stage set for contemporary plays. These plays show the years of my life, from the childhood I never wanted to leave to the beguiling adulthood that ultimately steals us all. Gathering and weaving observational and imaginative drawings into my work, I am able to condense time and so traces of my past linger like ghosts and my own memories exist forever. The ruler of my cast, a clean-shaven god, grants immortality; for in my kingdom nobody ever dies.

When I was younger I was told that if you repeated something sixty times over then you would never forget it. This phrase mirrors a childhood memory that I have of watching my mother at work reupholstering tapestries. The constant, continuous stitching and needlework made me aware that a world could be created through intricate detail. My paintings have allowed me to enshrine my past; a past that is at once personal, but one that all of us can identify with.