Melissa Gay paints primarily in acrylic and draws inspiration from mythology, folk legends, and fairy tales, as well as astrophotography, cosmology, and Earth sciences. Her paintings often combine sci-fi, fantasy, and wildlife art. She loves to build up dozens of thin layers of acrylic paint and glaze to create hazy, dreamlike scenes, incorporating just enough detail to inspire the viewer to fill in the story.
Beginning her career as a scientific illustrator, she went on to create award-winning covers and interior illustrations for publishers such as Baen Books, Llewellyn Worldwide, Hay House, Apex Press, Three Ravens Publishing, and 78 Tarot, as well as working on many fan-favorite tabletop games such as Delta Green, Over the Edge, Trail of Cthulhu, The Dracula Dossier, The Dresden Files, Part-Time Gods, Mermaid Adventures, Sagaborn, Surviving Strangehollow, Fate Worlds, Hero, The Yellow King RPG, and many others. Her work has been featured in ImagineFX Magazine, io9, tor.com, and several of the Infected By Art anthologies.
She has published two art books, Finding My Familiar (animal drawings on toned paper with various pencils) and Earth and Water (ink drawings and paintings), and she is currently working on a book of acrylic sci-fi paintings, called I Dream Of Space. (Gallery owners have scolded her for doing too many different things. Instead of stopping, she decided to do it even harder.)
Visit her on the web at , say hi on https://facebook.com/melissa.gay.art, or see what she's up to behind the scenes in her studio at https://patreon.com/MelissaGay.
