Bio:

Michaela was born in northern Minnesota where she grew up building snow forts and drawing with her brother--he specialized in dinosaurs, she covered everything else.  In 2000, she graduated from the University of Minnesota with her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.  After a brief return to Brainerd, MN, she came back to Minneapolis and quickly acclimated to the art community there.  She remained in Minneapolis until life recently brought her to the Pacific Northwest.

Michaela is currently enjoying the shocking green-scape and pressing clouds that seem close enough to touch. "Yes, I know it rains a lot here," she says, "but it will never be -30F, and where I'm from, that is something to appreciate!"

Statement:

My work is born from the mind wanderings surrounding events both experienced and borrowed.  Occasionally fictitious and often embellished, I explore moments where emotion is so strong that the recollections of actual events becomes clouded.  When an attempt to reconstruct the event fails, a simple emotion is what is left behind.  I use personal icons and collective pop culture images to create associations.  The investigation of color, texture, and interaction between various mediums, with both appropriated and original images, provides the backdrop to the concept.

I feel that the creation of art is an intensely personal, subjective experience; influenced strongly by one's personal journey.  It seems a natural progression that the art itself reflects the artist in both intense and mundane moments, balancing the planned and unplanned, and ultimately resulting in the feeling that the viewer is experiencing a still shot of a different life.  Whether allowing the viewer literal or dream-like glimpses into another's life, I create the opportunity for the viewer to feel connected to the artwork and to myself.  If the viewer feels as though they can read the story of the painting, the work can be appreciated within the context of the viewer's own personal story, instead of the viewer trying to understand the meaning of the artwork through my eyes.  That personal relationship between the viewer and the work is the experience I strive to create.