About the Art:

Joy and grief, light and dark, growth and destruction. Michaela’s work explores the intricate and intertwined sensations that surface when experiencing and processing life’s layered complexities. These are one translation of that alchemical process. Within that internal experience, it can feel like wading through mist to form the words to communicate with others. 

Through the use of vibrant colors, layered textures, and expressive brushstrokes, I aim to visually convey the emotional weight and overwhelm of these experiences. Thoughts, reflections, and personal poetry is layered during the painting process and are intentionally emphasized or hidden. They aid to represent the overpowering and discombobulating dialogue that runs through one's mind. Their hope is that they can facilitate a place of connection and understanding with those who relate to these themes, find their own meaning within these worlds, and be a point of contact for deeper connection in relationships and community.

The only way out is through.

About the Artist:

Michaela Griego was born of the desert in 1996 and grew from the land named Phoenix, Arizona. Michaela has been drawn to abstract artwork since they were a little kid, picking leafs and rocks with their mom to paint with. They continued to explore their interest in visual arts through their elementary and middle school years, quickly drawn to drawing and painting as a medium to express their complicated emotions and experiences with gender and sexuality, neurodivergence and bullying, culture and race, a turbulent home life, parental illness, and trauma and abuse.

Michaela’s first significant experience with mental illness begun when they were only 12. As life became more chaotic, their mental health continued to decline. In 2013, after experiencing sexual violence while their home life became unstable, their artwork transformed from representation expression to pure abstract to attempt to process the tangled and layered emotions. In 2015, Michaela chose to remain in the desert over the 10 art schools that accepted them on scholarship, and attend Arizona State University.

Through Michaela’s undergraduate years, they continued to develop their artistic voice and continued their abstract work as soon as they could in their upper graduate years. They took strides in beginning to safely outwardly express their truest self— Michaela begun to attend therapy in 2016 to make meaning of the traumatic decades behind them, come out as non-binary and a lesbian, and adopt their calico cat Jupiter. While attending school full time, they worked 2-3 jobs, spent long and late nights in the studio, exhibited both in and outside of university galleries, and pushed through their disabilities and health crises. Against all odds, Michaela graduated in May 2019 with their Bachelors Degree of Fine Arts. Over the past decade, Michaela has exhibited their work in several galleries in Seattle, New York, and all over the greater Phoenix area.

Currently, Michaela is exploring their intersectional identities and experiences and how they intertwine with a synthesis of nature, human, spirit, and life itself. Michaela wants to draw attention to the mirrored experiences of spirit, nature, community, and self, as well as the intricate sensations that surface when experiencing and processing life’s layered complexities. Their hope is that they can facilitate a place of connection with those who relate to these themes, find their own meaning within these worlds, and be a point of contact for deeper connection in relationships and community. Michaela continues to explore their painting practice full-time in their Downtown Phoenix art studio. Please contact them via email for inquiries regarding artwork, opportunities, and commission.