Michelle Bolinger  received her MFA from the University of Washington in 2005, and her BFA from Indiana University in 2003. She has had solo shows at Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle, WA, The Presidents Gallery at Harold Washington College and DIG, both in Chicago, IL. In addition, she has shown at Roots and Culture Gallery and the Swimming Pool Project Space in Chicago, and The Henry Art Gallery and Crawl Space, both in Seattle, WA. She currently teaches at Northwestern University, Lake Forest College and Harold Washington College.

Artist’s Statement

Notions of landscape inform my work. It is the idea of the landscape, its romanticism that I am interested in. The paintings are not singular or literal, but rather an accumulation of different time, light, desire, reaction and remembrance. Memory becomes selective in recollection of place. Time and process lead the paintings toward abstraction and an awkward beauty.

Sources include idealized memory, pastoral scenes from art history and single urban elements of the landscape (tree, sky). Color adds to the fantastical and fictitiousness of the environment portrayed. The palette is obsessively sweet, feminine, synthetic, saturated and false. Space is illustrated and built with the physical surface of the painting. Construction and deconstruction of this surface overrides overt representation, building a place that is familiar and accessible, yet not singularly pictorial. Landscape is recognized, but flattens quickly so that the painting is realized as an object. This makes it more truthful and specific to its existence as an object, a painting, and a unique place, not a representation.

Michelle Bolinger
December 2010