Michelle Bolinger was born in Terre Haute, IN in 1981. She received her BFA in painting from Indiana University in 2003 and MFA in painting from the University of Washington in 2005. Additionally she has studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the New York Studio School, and in Florence, Italy. Her work has been published in New American Paintings, Open Studio Press. She has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington and currently teaches at Pratt Fine Arts Center. Michelle’s work focuses on manipulations of synthetic color and paint density to create an abstract sensation of space, based around the landscape and cityscape. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the SoFA Gallery in Bloomington, IN, The Gormley Gallery in Baltimore, MA, A.I.R. Gallery, NY, NY, and Afif Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. In Seattle her work has been shown at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, the Henry Art Gallery, Crawl Space Gallery and she had her first solo show at Francine Seders Gallery in June, 2006.

Artist’s Statement

My paintings should represent a vivacious process and product. The place depicted only exists on my canvas and the dialogue between artist and object is ongoing. Each piece becomes an extension of a particular truth through my experimentations, offering a truly unique place to the viewer and myself. I reference the surrounding landscape, cityscape, and urban topographies, although process may lead these references to be unclear or distorted. I work a painting until it becomes dense and exhausted. Space is depicted through pictorial illusion and the thick or thinness of the paintings surface. The use of synthetic colors adds to the fantastical and fictitiousness of the environment portrayed. Saturation and palette should expose excessive sweetness, femininity, radiance and obnoxious beauty. Without much value, color alone is used to describe light, space, touch, mood, and atmosphere.