Michele Mikesell

The Simurgh and the Crow, surreal figurative abstract painting of woman in red

2025

American artist Michele Mikesell incorporates elements of Pop art, Surrealism and Expressionism into her eclectic works and creates a unique visual experience for the viewer. Her figurative paintings and portrait paintings depict figures that seem to be peering out at and contemplating anyone within a stone’s throw of the works. In Mikesell’s subjects’ faces, the influence of the 17th-century Dutch masters is also detectable, while her abstract paintings are marked by the influence of postwar Abstract Expressionist painters.

Mikesell was born in Alabama in 1973. She earned her BFA at Texas Woman's University, Denton, in 2002, where she minored in graphic design. In 2004, Mikesell earned her MFA at the University of Oklahoma before moving to Dallas to begin her artistic career. It didn't take long for her to begin turning heads. Dallas-based DECORAZON Gallery, located in the city's historic Bishop Arts District, started representing her in 2006.

When Mikesell begins to work on a piece in her studio, she is unhurried, allowing each project to unfold before her by reacting to the marks in the paint. Many of her paintings are of human figures with whom viewers may feel a sense of familiarity, while other works feature anthropomorphic animals or petroglyphs meant to function as metaphors for the dichotomy of animal instincts and human ideas. Mikesell also draws inspiration from mythology: The Morrigan (2017), for example, is based on a powerful figure from Irish folklore.

Mikesell has exhibited at many art fairs around the world, including SCOPE Art Show, London Art Fair, Aqua Art Miami and the Asia Contemporary Art Show in Hong Kong. She had a solo exhibition at the Ardmore Museum of Art in Oklahoma, and her work is held in numerous private and corporate collections and has been featured in publications like Juxtapoz magazine.

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