Michelle Chrisman began her art career in New York City as a fashion art director for Macys. To this day, she loves to paint the figure in the environment. During many visits to Santa Fe visiting her father, a sculptor, Chrisman fell in love with the desert Southwestern landscape.
She has been a plein air painter for over 15 years. Her plein air landscape studies began in Taos, New Mexico with famed painters, Ray Vinella and Kevin MacPherson. Chrisman is a member of Plein Air Painters of New Mexico and a founding member of The Denver 10. She is a founder of Wildlands Painted which is an annual fundraiser exhibit for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. Painting for this exhibit has taken her into remote wilderness areas to create paintings which will help raise awareness and funds to save endangered wilderness areas.
Published as an “Artist to Watch” in Southwest Art Magazine’s 2005 Collector’s Issue, Chrisman has also been featured in Cowboys & Indians Magazine, Focus Santa Fe Magazine, and the Taos News. Michelle Chrisman is a faculty member of the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque, NM, where she teaches 4 workshops a year in landscape and figure painting. She is also a plein air painting instructor in Taos, NM, for the Taos Historic Museum Foundation. In 2007, Chrisman was selected for the New Permanent Museum Exhibit at the Albuquerque Open Space Museum.
Artist’s Statement
I love the visual beauty of the American Southwest and living in Taos is a plein air painter’s visual feast, but when the snow comes to town, I am ready to head south! The next chapter of my painting career is winter painting trips through Arizona, off to California, and maybe the Carolina’s and beyond, in search of new desertscapes, palm trees, oceans and even painting people on the beach. Most of all, I love to paint quickly, from life, capturing not just the look of a place, but more importantly, the way a place makes me feel. It has been said that I am “an Impressionist, an Expressionist, and definitely a Colorist!” I think this is right. I would only add, that I also love the PAINT! I like for my paintings to speak loudly that it is indeed paint, lavishly using lots of paint for the texture and movement, showing the world the magic of oil paint.
