Elaine McMichael

Biography

Elaine majored in fine Arts at Emmanuel College, Boston and went on to receive Master of Education and Doctor of Education Degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.  Her lifelong focus has been the Visual Arts, as an art teacher, director of art and music education and currently as a professor preparing teachers of art at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.  Her artwork has been exhibited in Boston, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville, Lowell, Reading, and Melrose, MA.  Her work was selected for the National Art Education Electronic Gallery in 2004, 2005 and 2006.  Her paintings hang in numerous private collections.  Elaine’s artwork can be viewed at Gallery 302 Bridgton Maine.  Elaine exhibits in Bridgton’s annual Art in the Park. She is currently in the recently juried exhibit up Close and Personal in Gallery 5, Lewiston Maine.

Statement

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”  Pablo Picasso’s statement endures.  It affirms and sustains my infinite experimentations with color, composition and ideas.

Essentially, I paint with acrylics; however, my work includes experimentation with mixed media, watercolor, and calligraphic lettering.

The gamut of my subject matter ranges from expressing political themes and social issues to communicating through portraiture, exploring whimsy and capturing allure in particular spaces.

The body of work I call places recall locales that are special to me.  They evoke places I have been, the connections I make to other people, recollections of travel and the discovery of new neighborhoods.

Spaces represent the serendipity of new ways of seeing diverse spheres of human activity and the people and artifacts involved in them.  I focus on specific parts of the whole and juxtapose elements of them in different contexts.

Whimsy represents a body of work kindling my primitive style.  The paintings express feelings about nature and its animal inhabitants using hope-filled colors, whimsical compositions and tropical rhythms.

Spaces, Places and Whimsy are a look at my art in the context of a contemporary culture with limitless vision.