Melissa Lakey is a contemporary visual artist and illustrator based in Joshua Tree, California, where the windows of her art studio look out into the Mojave Desert.
She wanted to be a cowgirl when she grew up but ended up an artist instead, and now cowboys ride through her paintings, picking flowers and stopping to swim in every creek they pass.
A lover of art materials, she uses ink, gouache, watercolor, acrylic, colored pencil, and oil pastel, painting quickly and leaving room in each painting for surprises, experiments, and play.
Her colorful work celebrates the landscape, people, and animals of the American Southwest. 
We met her through our friends at Hey There Projects in Joshua Tree when they were talking about how wonderful she was to work with. When we took I look at her paintings, we knew straight up that we loved her work and her spirit.
This Summer is our first time showing Melissa’s work and we “When the Country Was Wild All Around” and we are so excited to get her and her work here to West Texas.