All my pictures are hand-cut from life at life drawing.

My technique of cutting from life has developed the style of these conceptual cuts.

When my pictures are on exhibition it is confronting to have them look back at me through the public eye.

I enjoy every moment of cutting my pictures from life.

All in all it is a life process.

Art commentator, Gordon Foulds, states: 'Melissa possesses a rare and original talent and we know of no other artist working in Australia in this way. She begins with either black or coloured cardboard and.. .without seeming to plan or draft, she begins cutting into the cardboard surface ... until suddenly an image will begin to emerge in the white interior of the cardboard. Her work encompasses ... recognisable images through to wholly abstracted and highly sophisticated ones.'

'All who are familiar with her work agree that she is a true original, ... a product of the times in which she was born and to which she has responded.'