b. 1973, Alabama, USA
Lives and works in Dallas, Texas, USA
In 2002, Michele Mikesell earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in graphic design from Texas Women's University in Denton, TX. Mikesell completed her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Oklahoma in Norman in 2004. Mikesell is a Dallas based artist, and has been represented by DECORAZON Gallery since 2006. Mikesell's work can be found internationally in many private and corporate collections, and exhibited in national and international art fairs including, London Art Fair, AQUA Miami; SCOPE Basel, Miami and New York City; The Suite Art Fair, Dallas; Art Santa Fe; Asia Contemporary, Hong Kong and the A ffordable Art Fair New York City, London, Hong Kong and Singapore. Mikesell recently had a solo exhibition at the Ardmore Museum of Art in Oklahoma, and was featured at the 2014 Art meets Architecture exhibition in Los Angeles.
She has been featured as one of today’s top Pop Surrealist artists, in publications like Juxtapoz Magazine, and her work characterized by playful and thought provoking narratives.
Creating individuals is what I am most interesting in the studio. It is my hope that these portraits will be familiar characters to the viewer, subjects we recognize and identify with. My work consistently travels along a general vein of the universal human experience. This particular group of paintings is an iconographical departure from previous work in that literal human features have been introduced. Other aspects of this work directly reference the anthropomorphic petro glyph characters in which I based my interest in painting. These realistic, stylized faces placed within loosely interpreted animal shapes and costumes narrate a continued thesis of dichotomy and metaphor - comparing and contrasting human ideas with animal instinct. Irony, contradiction, humor and tragedy, have been continued themes in my work and are illustrated not only within the image, but within the actual paint and surface of the painting.
I am in uenced by a diverse and extremely eclectic group of di fferent movements including Abstract and German Expressionism, Art Informal, Children’s Art, as well as the 17th century Dutch masters and the current Pop Surrealist movement. I work with little or no pre-conceived nished piece. My process is a constant acting and reacting from and within the marks subliminally laid into the paint.