This piece was created for The Piccolo Gallery’s commission call, themed 'Juxtaposition', an open prompt inviting artists to interpret the idea in their own way.
This mixed‑media piece shows a small, dilapidated house with a tiny ghost peeking out from one of its broken windows. The house is cut out and layered, lifting off the page. Below it, a cluster of fungi made from stacked, embroidered felt pieces form a bright, soft base. Large flowers rise up around the house, creating a dreamlike forest as the background, while an owl watches quietly from above. The mix of graphite, watercolour, felt, and acrylic creates a gentle juxtaposition of textures and ideas, offering wonderful details to discover.
This piece is a great fit for anyone who appreciates craftsmanship, creativity, and a quiet story. The layered textures and mixed‑media details make it genuinely engaging, with lots of small details to notice. It’s one of those works that feels even richer in person, photos can’t capture the depth, softness, and character built into it.
Melissa's work will be available for purchase at our Community Online Auction in Oct 2026. Purchases help uplift an everyday artist and fuel The Piccolo Gallery’s commission model.
These walls were built to keep me safe.
They say that I should break them down
destroy, digest, dissolve,
process them into
something better, something useful, beautiful, more appropriate,
easier to accept,
until nothing remains but raw earth under bare feet.
I’m fascinated by dilapidated structures, especially ones located in what is otherwise a bustling city. It’s shocking to see how something that was once warm and inviting can be so dramatically altered with years of neglect.
In Processing, the broken house could be anything: a memory, a trauma, a regret. Just beneath, a stack of turkey tail fungi work to digest all the shattered glass and broken wood to transform it into a beautiful floral forest. Water lilies, which grow in dark, muddy ponds, are often a symbol of resilience.
Melissa Peacock is a watercolour artist who paints local plants and animals in a whimsical, illustrative style, often with unexpected surface textures. She draws most of her visual inspiration from urban forests and aims to restore a natural sense of wonder in ordinary things. Based in Surrey, BC, she shows art in local group exhibitions and small markets and has many collectors across North America.
