Michael Kessler (artist)

Michael Kessler (artist) (born October 23, 1954) is an American artist. He currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

File:Michael Kessler Artist Portrait.jpg

Artist, Michael Kessler

Art

Kessler makes nature-based paintings that merge geometric elements with Biomorphism. He began his art career as a landscape painter. While still an undergraduate at Kutztown University Kessler received a fellowship from the Whitney Museum of American Art to study and produce art in New York City at the Whitney Independent Study Program. During this period he met many important artist working in New York City including Richard Tuttle and Dorothea Rockburne. Influenced by the paintings of Brice Marden and Elizabeth Murray as well as the music of Phillip Glass and Steve Reich he began experimenting with his own work. His paintings soon became fully non-objective. Kessler paints by pulling thin, translucent layers of acrylic paint across the surface. The layers build up and form patterns similar to those in nature, such as veins in a leaf or ripples in the sand. It is a laborious process which often requires as many as 100 layers on a single painting.

In 1991 after returning from a year in Italy (via. the Rome Prize) Kessler became very involved with large-scale, site-specific installations. Gallery owner Chris Schmidt (Schmidt/Dean Gallery, Philadelphia) worked with Kessler to initiate this project by obtaining a commission from Senator Arlen Specter for Kessler's first site-specific work which was installed in Senator Specter's office at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. In Chicago Kessler continued this pursuit with Gallery owner Paul Klein who also got involved with the placement of site-specific works in his gallery Klein Art Works.