My work reflects my ongoing search for belonging and integration within a life lived between worlds. I was raised in a family of professional artists with strong Scandinavian, German and Japanese traditions – a fascinating, but also complex mix of cultures. As a child I was drawn to the wooded ravines surrounding our Pacific Northwest home, finding a connection at the threshold between civilization and the wilderness.
In my twenties I continued to look for the parallels within diverse arenas, immersing myself in Norse, African and Native American sacred rituals and traditions. During this time, I also married; by thirty-three I was widowed. Searching for solace and regeneration, I returned to where I had always felt most myself: Art and Nature.
A passion for horses surfaced and led to three years of adventures throughout the West. I explored the land through the eyes of those majestic creatures – and in them, searched for who I had now become. During that time, sparked by the single, powerful image of a horse pelvis bone becoming a mask over my own face, I began the Earthen Body photographic series. Through exploring self-portraiture on the land, I continued my investigation of interconnection in relationship to the earth.
The transformations I experienced during Earthen Body prepared me for my next photographic series, Painted Body. This ongoing work moves beyond self-discovery, transcending the individual and integrating the timeless essence of cross-cultural and primal influences. In 2011 I changed my professional name to Mellissae Lucia and now have a wordpress blog there:
www.MellissaeLucia.wordpress.com
You may see more of my artwork and adventures here at my website, including the Oracle of Initiation deck:
In Spring 2012 MK Barr produced a movie on the wisdom of the working artist I grew up with and my metamorphosis in the desert called Painted in the Desert:
Melissa Weiss Steele's Blog 
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