Plunge into the Arts with Mel Murphy and Eileen Shaloum

Please join us for our Plunge Into The Arts Artist Open House featuring the work of Mel Murphy and Eileen Shaloum!, Wednesday, February 12th at 6:00pm at Plunge Beach Resort.

Complimentary registration and cash bar with happy hour pricing!

Walk-ins are welcome!

About Mel:

Melvin Murphy is a visual artist residing in Coral Springs, Florida. His goal with his art is to portray his view on the issues surrounding the interactions of people. His medium of choice is acrylic paint but also explores oils and charcoal.

Melvin is a published cartoonist and the creator of the 1993 comic strip “J*il Times” in the Keepers’ Voice magazine. He has no limit on art expression in his paintings. In more recent years, Melvin decided to focus on bold acrylics colors and has been steadily evolving as an artist.

By the most recent Post-COVID studies of human behavior.

Melvin’s body of work is a direct response to the growing complexities we now face in every age, race, culture, and gender. Melvin’s intentions are to bring awareness, tolerance, and healing.

Melvin has been a Law Enforcement Officer for over 30 years at the Broward Sheriff’s Office. He’s currently the Department of Law Enforcement Training Sergeant.

Melvin and Claire have been married for over 30 years and have seven adult children and four grandchildren.

About Elieen:

Eileen Shaloum is a painter and mixed media artist who searches for and employs the whimsical in her subject matter. Her work evokes the joy and innocence one usually finds in children’s art. Having been an art educator in the public schools on Long Island, New York, for over thirty years influenced much of her art making, an abstract process with childlike sophistication. Her colors are often bold, and her compositions alternate between ordered and loose, but always playful. She enjoys adding handmade and found papers, fabric, photographs, string and other found objects to her acrylic paint to give the surface a textural quality.

Her present body of work has also been influenced by the writings of Italo Calvino in his book, “Invisible Cities.” The imaginary landscapes conjured by Calvino beckoned to her to interpret them on canvas and paper, which led to her unique, fantastical semi-landscape style which she calls “Dreamscapes.” She invites viewers into these paintings where they can climb stairs and ladders to nowhere while winding their way through picture planes on shapes, textures and colors that guide their eyes through these spirited compositions.

Since 2016, Eileen has been experimenting on loose canvas, sewing and gluing canvas shapes into compositions that hang on a bar or rod. These pieces are not too different in style than her paintings on stretched canvas other than the fact that her shapes become the picture plane without being confined to the typical rectangle or square. She embellishes these surfaces with fabric, string, ribbons, buttons, jewels, beads, trimmings, and all sorts of odds and ends, which adds even more texture. These “wall hangings” are two dimensional, but with a three-dimensional sensibility. As her latest endeavor, she creates mini “Jewel Boxes.” In these wood shadow boxes, she positions her fabric collages, sewn, glued and embellished much like the work on her wall hangings.

Eileen has been an artist for more than forty years. Her work is in several private collections in the United States and England. She exhibits widely throughout the United States, mostly in New York and Florida. An active exhibiting member of several Florida art organizations, Eileen has been showing her art all over Florida for over eighteen years.

Host or Publisher Plunge Beach Resort