Melissa Chimera is a Honolulu native of Lebanese and Filipino ancestry. She studied Natural Resources Management at the University of Hawai`i, while mentoring under Hawai`i painters Peggy Chun and later George Allan and Tony Walholm.  She currently exhibits on Maui and O`ahu.  Her work is in national and international private and public collections.

Her inspiration as an artist is rare plants that she and her husband, a botanist, encounter in remote places.  She moved to Maui to protect Nature Conservancy forests and now leads volunteers into the wilds of Haleakalā National Park.  Chimera’s past decade as a conservation manager confirms that people who love Hawai`i mistakenly identify it with foreign plants, like the Costa Rican plumeria flower.  Most people don’t know the flowers she paints.  They are unaware that the subjects of her canvases are the first kama`āina (islanders). Hawai`i is the world's epicenter for plant and animal extinction.

That Chimera’s family fled war in Lebanon also brings a unique insight into life and death for the artist.  The Diaspora and death of her mother’s people continues in many parts of the middle east today.  Chimera’s work also explores the similar fate of middle eastern peoples, as well as the Hawaiian environment, all of which are at once endangered yet resilient in the face of change.  The real Hawai`i–a place of forgotten flowers and people, of devastation and recovery–is truly veiled by the myth of paradise.

Chimera keeps a studio in Makawao, Maui.  She is a guest lecturer on the value of art in conserving native life.  She has been invited to present her work to the Native Hawaiian Plant Society, the Maui County mayor, Garden Isle Arts Council, and the Hawai`i Conservation Alliance’s annual statewide show Conservation Through Art.  In 2006, Hana Hou! magazine cited her work as the “Best of the Islands, Maui.”  Yet her intention goes beyond Hawai`i.  She connects the local extinction crisis to those catastrophic events happening on the global scene, by rendering native life and environments.

“There is endangerment for all forms of life throughout the world.  And despite this, sensuality, grace and humility shine in native peoples and places.  I want to explore that interaction, between what is lost and what is possible to nurture and save.  I want to close that gap.”

Chimera is represented by the Fine Art Associates and on Maui by Sutrov Gallery, the Hana Coast Gallery and the Hui No`eau Visual Arts Center.