Melanie Tiongson

Based in the San Francisco area, artist Melanie Tiongson creates fun and whimsical artworks featuring figures full of curiosity inspired by Filipino folklore and the uncompromised freedom of her young daughter’s imagination. Her mixed media paintings feature a combination of purposeful collage of vintage Tagalog books, expressionist abstraction as well as illustration to communicate positivity and love.

Born in the Philippines, Tiongson tries to integrate the stories which shaped her as an artist into each of her artworks. To do so, she collects old vintage papers and books from the Philippines dating all the way back to the 1800s.  When possible, she integrates stories of Filipino folklore and Philippine’s history into her collages. This mix of the historical and the whimsical encapsulates Tiongson’s experience as an immigrant and a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

“At the age of fifteen, my family and I immigrated to Oakland California that changed my life profoundly. As a young teenager, it was a difficult transition to adapt to this new environment. Back in the '90s being part of the LGBTQ+ community made it more difficult. It was a tremendous change for me, almost like losing one's identity. I found solace in art putting my thoughts and emotions onto blank pieces of canvas, a place of catharsis.”

Tiongson studied at the Art Institute of California in San Francisco which pushed her beyond traditional drawing toward her unique illustration inspired style in part through her love of graphic design. Over the course of the last year, Tiongson also started creating artwork together with her young daughter who taught her to “paint without restriction, to stop overthinking composition, and to have fun.”