Melinda Trucks

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Melinda Trucks grew up in what was then the quiet mountain town of Gatlinburg.  The Great Smoky Mountains provided an environment rich in colors and textures that she continues to translate into her work.  Her grandmother was a master weaver who, when widowed with four children, opened a shop to sell her crafts.  As a child, Melinda was often sent into the mountains to pick berries and bark for her grandmothers’ dyes.  She recalls watching her uncle work at easel painting on the back porch of her childhood home. Against a background of a violent family – a schizophrenic mother and alcoholic father – that presented itself as ideal in social settings, Trucks developed an interest in the healing properties of Narrative Art and the disjointed psychology of her rural life.

 Trucks’ art education began at the Webb School in Knoxville. It was there that she spearheaded the fine arts program and decided to pursue a career in art with an emphasis on the human figure.  She matriculated to the College of Fine Arts at the University of Tennessee, and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts and Art Education.  The paintings she produced at this time show a dramatic sense of color, a fluid sense of line, and a growing interest in dream-like narratives. Trucks was invited by a friend in the music business to go backstage at a rock concert in Providence. It would prove to be providential: she and the drummer, Butch Trucks of the Allman Brother’s Band, immediately connected and were soon married.  At the birth of their second child, they moved to Tallahassee, Florida, where Trucks completed her MFA at Florida State University.
Melinda painting Balinese Dancers
Melinda painting Rainy Day in Venice The primary caregiver of two small children, Trucks also worked as an Adjunct Professor at both Florida State and Tallahassee Community College. Her work of this period focuses on reworking the tropes of classical portraiture. She often staged bizarre, undecidable narratives with family members or colleagues as models.  In 1990, shortly before the family moved to South Florida, Trucks was honored at the Atlantic Center for the Arts to study with Jack Beal.  At this time, she abandoned the use of seamless brushstrokes in favor of a looser, more painterly style.  Her more recent work reflects the expansion of her interest from the folk culture and setting of her home town to those of more isolated cultures she encounters in her travels.  She continues to live and work in Palm Beach, Florida.