Gary McMichael
Painter & Photographer
I am a visual artist, a painter and photographer. Being blessed with a head full of ideas, it is through the challenge of turning these ideas into reality that I find expression for my art. The natural world and the environment have always been a powerful influence in my ideas, but so has mankind and our relationship to the environment. A rock is nature, but a man can stack rocks and turn them into a symbol, a fence, a shelter or even an exquisite sculpture. It is where nature and man come together I am finding the my most interesting visions and motivation.
For four years I have been working on a body of work I call Cairns and Rocks. It is a grouping of paintings in the form of still-lifes and rock-strewn landscapes that is the emphasis of this body of work. My inspiration to paint Cairns and Rocks comes from visits to the North Shore of Lake Superior, western trips to Utah’s and Arizona’s Red Rock Country and discoveries on our own Ozark gravel bars. I come across these beautiful cairns, created and left behind by other creative rock lovers. I like to think of my cairn paintings as collaborations with rock lovers and artists I’ve never met.
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