Michelle Torrez Figurative Paintings

Known for her powerful and elegant color work, Michelle Torrez' expressionistic oil painting figures are vivid and painterly. But on closer examination, there are qualities that are not obvious - Torrez communicates the beauty of unlikely emotions. Torrez believes that the greatest influences on her work were the circumstances of her childhood and teen-age years. "My life influenced me to look deeper to find the beauty and humanity in people and places. Even at an early age, I knew I was an artist." Born in Denver, Colorado, Torrez is the oldest of four children from a working class family. Caring for her younger siblings while her parents worked, she would sit on the porch and draw to pass the time. "The other children would come round to watch, and art soon became a way of making friends for me." Instead of playing with other children, she drew them on computer paper her father brought home from his job at IBM. Her art became a survival skill in a rough urban junior high school, where Torrez entertained even the toughest girls by drawing pictures of naked men. By the age of 13, she was painting and selling black light posters...