News & Updates
Updates, events, & perspectives regarding the state of the arts.
5 Tiny Visions
This Saturday, July 7th at the Hive Gallery in Los Angeles is the opening of a show called “Tiny Visions”. Alongside the pieces below are works from Violet Divine (my amazing wife), Martina Hoffmann, Radhika Heresy, Dan Cohen and a bunch of others (maybe two dozen other artists?) Small (tiny) paintings like this allow for […]
Interview on Inside the Rift
I had the pleasure of sharing some thoughts about art, nature, and humanity on InsidetheRift.com “There’s no time for ego games or marketing plans when it comes to art making. It’s just art. It’s you and your chosen materials and your vision, your inspiration. You have to cut through all of the mind-games if you […]
Commissioned Portrait: “A New Perspective”
“A New Perspective”Acrylic/Canvas15″ x 22″ A collector of my work, Eben Pagan, commissioned me to paint a portrait of him in my style. I don’t do a lot of portraiture so I enlisted Violet’s help and we worked together on this painting. She is more adept at creating from real life than I am. In that way, we tend […]
Kiva – Loans that Change Lives
Some time back I loaned some money on Kiva. Then, after the allotted time, I started getting my repayments. Those payments ended up just sitting in my account there not doing much. So I started looking around and reloaning the money. A little here, a little there. Every little bit, they say, helps. Plus, these […]
Summertime Paintings 2015
Years ago I got into a kind of creative flow that went like this: winter was when I worked on large, detailed paintings while summer was for getting out and doing things and events and traveling and the like. I found myself painting and sort of hibernating during many winters because life feels quieter and more […]
It’s Dorky Day!
Back in 2003, inspired by a chapter of The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle, I painted “The Dorky Painting.” The book is one of my absolute favorite books ever. It’s a hard to describe little book. But it’s a perfect book if you’re into that sort of thing. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in the introduction “It’s like an […]
Recognition/Compassion (St. Francis)
St. Francis – he always seemed to be around when I was growing up. I had a St. Francis nightlight of glowing yellow translucent porcelain. A two foot tall concrete statue of him lived in the garden. He was over our big console TV, as a cross stitch on burlap or something – some coarse […]
Interview on Reality Sandwich
Nese Devenot interviewed me recently for www.RealitySandwich.com. From her Introduction… Among the newer iterations of visionary artists – a cohort that includes Amanda Sage, Luke Brown, Adam Scott Miller, and Andrew “Android” Jones – Michael Divine has carved out a niche all his own. His evolving style is unmistakeable even from a distance: sweeping vistas, […]
Fire Paintings from September 11, 2001
I woke up the morning of September 11 with a desire to paint big red fiery paintings. I had a couple of large pieces of masonite – a 4′ x 4′ square and a 4′ x 2.5′ rectangle – and a few cans of red, yellow, orange, and purple latex paints. So around 8 am, with a cup of coffee, I went at it. The diamond/square painting I called ‘Phoenix.’ The other was ‘Unsquaring the Circle’ and felt like a great release of energy.