Melissa Tshikamba, “Lavender,” 2026

Imagination sits at the center of creativity. It also fuels our dreams. Utah-based artist Melissa Tshikamba explores both in her exhibition at the Orem Library Hall Gallery. With a BFA from BYU, Tshikamba—a name that combines two female ancestral names from the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo—has developed a visual language that blends realism, mythology, nature, the divine feminine, and her ancestral heritage to reflect the beauty of everyday life and the natural world. The work is both firmly entrenched in realistic depictions of people, flowers, and animals as well as floating in an almost ethereal beauty of dream-like settings that surround these figures and botanicals.

In “Wild Poppies,” Tshikamba’s mastery of gold leaf is apparent. The hyperrealistic flowers and delicate bees float against an abundance of gold leaf that creates a vibration reminiscent of the heat of the summer sun. It’s almost challenging to see the fine detail of the flowers, much like when the sun bombards your eyes in the garden.

Similarly, “Black Stallion” depicts a beautifully detailed black horse against this same heavy gold leaf background. The artist has managed to create a ground line with the gold leaf which does give the horse a firm footing. But that gold has a powerful effect on the eye, broken centrally by the horse and near the top by a silver-leafed moon. This work, like most of the 25+ pieces in the show, has an equally golden frame.

The frames complement the paintings well. Not just because of the gold, but because of their delicate sculptural qualities. This is especially true with the smaller works like “Hummingbird” and “Lavender.” Many of these smaller paintings are also painted on glass, which accentuates their luminosity. The artist works in oil, which adds to the richness of the surfaces and the heightened detail she seeks.

In a particularly impressive frame, though silver-toned this time, “Dawn,” reflects the he ethereal quality Tshikamba strives for. The central tree is surrounded by backlighting and stands on a watery ground, both of which harken back to the backgrounds created by artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. It feels like a divine light in a divine space.

The same feeling is evident in “Dreamer” and “Grandma’s Garden,” where the figures appear to be a part of the beautiful landscape in which they’re set. “Serenity” places a white swan on a lake to the same effect. Walking along the wall where Tshikamba’s works hang is like walking down a misty path in a voluminously green park. The artist has certainly created a mood.

Melissa Tshikamba, “Dawn,” 2026

Her florals are captivating in their softness and tender depictions. “Lavender on Gold,” “Dark Bloom,” and “White Poppy” are small, but entrancing single flower paintings. The large “Peony Blooms” is one of the strongest works in the show. The angled composition is buoyed by the warm delicacy of the blooms and the varying shades of pink. The petals invite a deep view into the hearts of the flowers. The artist’s selection of a warm silver frame blends well with the misty, airiness of the painting.

The figural works like “Raspberry Picking” and “Raspberry Picking Study #1,” as well as “Windswept” and “A Boy and his Cat Study #1,” reference the artist’s memories and her “passion to create art that truly represents our human family.” In a 2023 interview with The LDS Women Project, she explained that her focus on women stems from growing up without images of Black women in art. “Part of painting myself and other Black women was a process to develop self-love, maybe find my identity culturally, and redefine what beauty was to me outside of what the world was telling me what beauty was. It was to help myself to unlearn false things.” These warm, life-filled scenes sit alongside the natural forms well, all treated with equal love and skill by the artist, creating an overall cohesiveness to the exhibit.

Gina Cavallo

Gina Cavallo has been a curator, registrar, and executive director in museums for over 35 years. She spent many years as an art critic for publications in Phoenix. She began her career at the Phoenix Art Museum and the Heard Museum, was a founding curator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, spent two terms managing exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and was the Executive Director at the Mission Inn Foundation & Museum in Riverside, California. Her current role is Director of Development for Taproot Theatre Company in Seattle where she also serves as the curator of the Kendall Center Exhibition Series. She moved to Orem in 2024 with her husband, a theatre faculty member at UVU.