MICHAEL PHILLIPS - VISUAL ARTIST
Michael’s journey as an artist began with a career in web design and graphics design. Photography and music were important hobbies at this time, but a health crisis produced the inevitable epiphany that his motivation had always been creativity and that returning to those roots would facilitate healing. When hearing loss and tinnitus ended musical interests, he turned with greater enthusiasm to photography and painting, eventually devoting his attention to a career as a full-time artist.
A protégé of local landscape and wildlife painter John Mac Kah, Michael works with oils, using all traditional materials and mediums. He makes his own panels using masonite, birch, linen, as well as traditional gesso, made from calcium carbonate, titanium dioxide, and rabbit skin glue. Working with the indirect painting method, using traditional mediums and layering techniques, he strives to produce paintings in a realist style while maintaining subtle impressionistic touches. The wildlife portraits have presence and depth, bringing a personality and anthropomorphic quality to the animals. Michael has studied Rembrandt van Rijn’s palette and style extensively, and attempts to bring the same sensibility to our animal friends that Rembrandt did for people. Many portraits are built up in layers of semi-transparent earth tones, giving them stronger light and subtlety. Michael also has a gift for capturing the unique personalities of the animal companions in our lives and offers pet portraits.

As a photographer, Michael works to find immediacy and reality in his work. His photographs make powerful use of natural light sources to provide a radiant and film-like quality. An advocate of 'no flash' philosophy, he has developed a distinct skill for capturing subjects in natural light, giving the photographs a traditional b/w or color film look. Amongst his many favorites subjects are flowers, pollinators, people, animals, and industrial and street scenes. His main influences are Henri Cartier-Bresson, Stanley Kubrick, and Jim Shaughnessy.

Michael is a member of the f/32 Photography Group and the Carolinas Nature Photographer's Association. His work has been featured at the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas, at Roots Cafe in the River Arts District in Asheville, NC, and in the Laurel of Asheville magazine.