Melissa is a regionally based artist in the Yarra Valley, her home studio hive (The Honeybee Temple) is situated on an off-grid, intentional community called Moora Moora.
Mostly self-taught in painting and drawing, she has also had many painting mentors over the years, some of which spring from the lineage of Ernst Fuchs (Vienna surrealist and visionary arts); Wolfgang Widmoser, Amanda Sage, Laurence Caruana, Maura Holden, Andrew Gonzalez. Also Bruno Torfs.
Shemanna's highly pigmented oil and egg tempera paintings, have an evolutionary enquiry into human natural intelligence, ancient myth & lore; contrasting super worldly imagery of organic form, futuristic technology and hyper coloured lenses with a visionary edge.
Melissa founded The Honeybee Temple Arts Foundation in 2018, which is an arts and culture pollinator NGO, which acts as a mycelium network for innovating multidimensional creativity into communities worldwide, through diverse community projects that focus on connecting and developing natural creativity in all areas that are all non-corporate.
Shemanna's paintings can be found in permanent art collections in Australia, the USA, Netherlands, Romania, Bali, Hawaii & Italy.