Michele Riche 

About Michele:

​

Michele received her BFA at St. Lawrence University and continued her education in New York City, taking classes at The School of Visual Arts, among other institutions. In 2018, Michele left her job in non-profit development to pursue her painting full time. Michele has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, as well as being selected as a Spotlight Artist recipient at Artexpo New York in 2021. She received “Best In Show” at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT in 2019, and had a solo exhibition at the Mattatuck Museum that year. She lives in Connecticut.

​​

About My Work:

​

I am a figurative painter working mainly in oil on canvas. My current body of work focuses on my dog and her shadow. I use them as a way to explore feelings about identity, memory, and the different sides of ourselves that we choose to conceal or reveal.

​

I’ve begun a shift away from being strictly realistic in my rendering. I’m interested in what happens when the image becomes less clear and more abstract. Playing with unusual cropping, different types of brushwork, and areas that feel unfinished or more expressive have allowed me to heighten the tension and articulate dualities in a different way.

​

Much of my work explores my personal history and themes of identity. The series of bathers deals with presence, absence and rebirth and what it means for me personally to be a woman at this stage of my life, with my history, and looking towards the future.The flowers speak to me as relationships do. I am engaged by their intricacies, gestures and interplay and feel an urgency to capture that moment before it fades.

​​

For me, painting is a process of self-reflection. I use it to work through feelings like loss, isolation, and connection as well as personal memory. By painting something familiar, I’m trying to work through something deeper -  a persistent sense of uncertainty and displacement in the world.

​

​

​

​​