Born and raised in Southern California, Michelle was drawn to art at an early age. Growing up, she spent her time drawing, crafting, and dancing ballet. Her love for art continued to grow, but wasn’t realized until years later after her 4 children were born. While raising her family, she jumped at the chance to help them with school art projects at home and in the classroom. She enjoyed leading the art projects for Mother’s Of Preschoolers (MOPS) for a few years until she moved to Washington State.
As her family grew more independent, Michelle was able to carve out some time for herself to develop as an artist. Her earliest influence was Bob Ross and the beauty of the Northwest. She fell in love with painting landscapes and so she gave oil painting a try. Her love for landscape painting remained, but she didn’t care much for working with oils due to the long drying time.
As her interests in community theatre grew, it satisfied her longing to create in brand new way. She was able to use her artistic skills in set design by painting several art murals for productions.
Michelle returned to working outside the home which left little time for art. It wasn’t until about 10 years later during the COVID pandemic that she felt drawn to return to art. Since live theatre was shut down, she found herself looking once again for a creative outlet. She began experimenting in fluid acrylic art and found that she enjoyed working with acrylic paint. She especially loved how the paint colors interacted with each other creating something very unique.
While watching on Facebook one day, Michelle ran across the artist Jennifer Vranes and was introducing to her Dabbler group. She was immediately drawn to her style of thick, vibrant, textured landscape painting and knew that this group was exactly what she needed to develop as an artist. With lots of time of her hands, Michelle spent 2 years as a Dabbler learning and growing in her skills and developing her personal style. She found sculpting in the thick texture with a pallet knife so satisfying.
Her longing and deep desire to create art is a fulfilling expression of thankfulness and gratitude to God who is the ultimate creator and lover of beauty. Her hope is that each piece of art created is unique, meaningful, and brings a sense of joy to all who view it.