Michelle Reeves has spent a lifetime exploring the emotional effect of color. As a make-up artist, she considers herself more of a colorist and appreciating the effect color has on each of us is key to her paintings. Floral beauty is her sanctuary, causing a visceral response to the beauty and the possibilities through flowers and color – putting voice to canvas through paint and palette knife in an impressionistic fashion. Each one of her paintings provoke an emotion that is pleasing, whimsical and delicious.
Her story is unlike most. She started painting at 52 and is a self-taught painter who started her art career in 2018 as a result of a college color theory course and one question a gentleman asked during a job interview: “What are you passionate about?” She pondered the answer to that question and as a result went back to school to get an Interior Design degree thinking that would fill the void inside. But along the way through the course work something happened...she started to paint and found her calling and passion!
At first she painted for the class, then it was for the love of expression, and then it was a necessity.. Pressure from the desire to create had built up for decades and the painting came out almost volcanically, she painted every day for hours a day and soon a distinct style emerged.
Michelle’s work is abstract/expressionism with a dash of realism. Colors, forms and textures inspired by nature, are the key components and consideration for her paintings. The emotion you feel when you sniff a fragrant rose or stand in a beautiful garden are the emotions she desires to express on canvas even when faced with bad or ugly subject matter. Her artistic ideas are translated with color-lacing, color-dragging techniques and building implied and impasto texture strictly using palette knives. Color-lacing outlines raised texture using black, white and/or gold, to give definition and interest. Color-dragging pulls one or more color(s) into another without blending creating depth and interesting color combinations. Texture is created by using an impasto technique, or an implied texture technique, which consists of layering color on canvas then scraping the excess, giving each painting a unique multi-layered look.
Recently, Michelle has been published in House&Garden UK magazine in the July, August and September 2019 issues and has been a feature in Styleblueprint.com FACES section in the Jan, 2019 issue, is an Award of Ecellence winner with Camelback Gallery for the 2020 All Abstracts International competition and a Finalist Award winner for Camelback Gallery Flower Power International competition, Award winner in the Light Space Time Online Gallery “2019 Botanicals”, 2 awards winner in the 10th Botanical Art Exhibition and 9th All Women Art Exhibition 2020 and a Finalist Award winner with the Camelback Gallery in the 2020 Flower Power exhibition. Michelle has also won 4 International awards with ARTRoom Gallery and 2 International Awards with GreyCube Gallery in 2020 to total 12 International Awards in competitions with in the last year. She has also been awarded two coveted artists residencies in 2020; May in Italy and September in France. (postponed to 2021)
Michelle believes art should be enjoyed and accessible to all who love it. Most days you can find her in her studio painting, and discovering something new that color, form, and canvas have to offer.
