ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Michael Henry has been creating his whole life. Born in rural North Western Pennsylvania he was steeped in the sound, feel and flow of nature. He was often frustrated in youth at not having the skill to capture what was around him. The arts were his favorite subjects growing up. Theatre, chorus, painting and an avid love for the outdoors occupied most of his time. He took private watercolor lessons in high school and continued his training at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh on a full scholarship. A spiritual crisis of many layers and influences arose while navigating the modern urban life. He began reading anything that interested him in the areas of religion, philosophy, psychology and the occult. Rather than pursuing a commercial art career after graduation, he continued his exciting and dangerous job as a bicycle courier in the city, while painting abstracts in his apartment at night. He worked in a photo lab in Texas as a custom printer and eventually met his future wife. She would inspire in him another lifelong passion, teaching children. They moved to Colorado where they were eventually able to open a small preschool with the idea that once it grew more successful Michael would have time to pursue his arts more. With the business and family life, art simmered on the back burner,  or rather, at times boiled and overflowed. His children are older now and he is exploring deeply again the creative life. 

Michael's realistic art sometimes reflects the experiences in his life, scenes that move him, moments that "flash" in his mind and speak something to him about the harmony or balance in that moment to be captured. But sometimes his realism is created with the simplest and most childlike reason of all...that someone may like it. Isn't that what all artists want? 

Michael's abstract art explores universal concepts of human experience and struggles and also the natural cycles and expressions of the Earth.