Redolent with the scent of paints and linseed oil, Melissa Tulloch’s compact studio in her Irvine’s Landing home glows with light on a rainy March afternoon. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors catch the light from the north-facing window and reflect the mossy alders and distant misty mountains that provide background inspiration for the artist’s flights of fancy.

Although painting in oils has fallen out of favour with many painters of late, “I love oils and most of the people I admire paint in oils,” Tulloch explains. “I’ve always said there’s something about the fine art of applying paint to canvas – it should be like pudding or butter in texture, thick and rich – it should just make your mouth water.”

Tulloch’s influences are clearly the pre-Raphaelites – a group of early Victorian-era painters who were in turn inspired by medieval painters of the pre-Renaissance (up to and including Raphael). Like those painters centuries past, Tulloch finds inspiration in history, the Bible and folk mythology – particularly English fairy tales – and interprets these themes with an eye for realism that is true to nature.

In the more than 20 years she has been painting in oils, Tulloch’s influences have ranged from the surreal (“I was quite inspired by Salvadore Dali) to the luminous, painterly style that is her present hallmark.

She credit travels in Europe with opening her eyes to the possibilities of the pre-Raphaelite style. Like so many students, she would sit in front of particular works of inspiration and copy them. “I was sitting in front of Da Vinci’s The Madonna of the Rock, drawing it, and someone came by and bought the drawing. I made about six of them and sold them all. Then I did a few reproductions in oil, and taught myself to do fleshwork by really studying the masters.”

The result is work that glows with rich colour and intricate texture. Unhappily, it is often work that gallery owners refuse to believe is Tulloch’s own original work. “They say, well, if you painted this then why haven’t I heard of you?”

At La Cabana Gallery in Sechelt, Ray Middlemiss saw and believed. “This is just great work, isn’t it?” he enthused. “No one else is doing work like this.”

A severe self-critic, Tulloch admits “I’m a real perfectionist. I sit and gaze at my pieces for hours on end and pick them apart. It’s hard – there always seems to be one little adjustment…”

Tulloch sets herself challenges in her work, and when they are met she recognizes this with some satisfaction. Two works now on display at La Cabana – Eros Loading His Bow and A Pale Horse – met her stringent criteria. A Pale Horse was particularly successful, she says, as “the whole goal was to take an unattractive subject – death – and paint it beautifully.”

“What I’m doing, I’m getting back to being a storyteller, the way artists used to be. Michaelangelo told the story of the Book of Revelation in frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Art is a language and I think that if you speak it fluently, there should be no barriers - you can make your pieces speak to everyone with their own words.”