Michele Mikesell doesn‘t paint creatures—she responds to apparitions. At least, that‘s the first step in her process; as Mikesell applies gesso to board, she uncovers subtle forms that will dictate the subjects of the work to follow. Successive applications of oil paint, followed by aggressive (and often destructive) bouts of anti-finish work—sanding, scratching and peeling the paint—result in Monsters, an exhibition of fifteen new paintings by Michele Mikesell at Altered Space Gallery.

In Monsters, anthropomorphic birdlike creatures and mammalian distortions, most marked with delicate human eyes or faces, peer out at the viewer from largely emptied space. The creatures assume an augural stature, odd soothsayers that are humorously—if a bit unsettlingly—reflective of the human beings they appear to foil. While they may look like monsters, Mikesell draws upon the human experience—her observations of the unique people she meets and their stories she collects—to bring these apparitions life. Is Mikesell‘s the work of an Outsider? Pop-Surrealist? Indentity artist? The answer is perhaps incidental—when the artist‘s fables are finished and her fabulous creatures stare out serenely from the gallery wall, it‘s possible the only real monsters in the room are we.

Michelle Mikesell earned her BA in Fine Arts from Texas Women‘s University and her MA in Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma, Norman. She lives and works near Dallas, TX.

Quotes from the Artist:
"My parents raised me without a television, which gave me a lot of time as a child to have a quiet openness in my mind. It left a lot of room in there that I had to learn to fill myself."

"I think it's interesting that Monsters are this sort of Human invention, probably preceding the wheel. I think it's also interesting that what may be a monster to one, may not be a monster to another. The root of the word Monster is Latin, 'monere' which means 'to warn.‘ There's an interesting irony to that."