Michelle Lewis - Artist

Michelle Lewis is a painter, photographer, and retired art educator and dance teacher who has always embraced the creative process. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from York University in Toronto, Canada, and her Education Degree in the late ’70s. Michelle has been teaching for over thirty years. Her career has spanned many geographic distances, including First Nations People in northern Ontario, Canada, Guadalajara, Mexico, Akron, Ohio, Berkeley, and Oakland, California. She has taught primary education, including Modern Educational Dance, Art, and Reading Intervention. Michelle also studied weaving in rural Ontario, Canada, Chapala, Mexico, and Berkeley, California in the early '80s.

Michelle started to explore painting much later in her artistic career. With her strong background in dance, one can see essential rhythmic elements in her work. She was also a celebrated nature photographer for many years in Ontario, prior to moving to the United States. She combines the technical proficiency of a photographer with artistry to create abstract images and compositions of people and nature. She also combines textures in her paintings as a weaver would, choosing her weft. "I see painting as a very rhythmic, textural, organic art form", says she.

Michelle's work is dynamic, eclectic, and continues to evolve.

Artist Statement

In my artwork, I attempt to express my relationship with nature, abstraction, and people.

There is an ever-present element of movement and rhythm in the way I paint, having worked professionally in dance, photography, and weaving. These diverse art forms have helped shape my aesthetic.

I bring to the canvas an intuitive sense of what inspires me.

-Michelle Lewis

Michelle has collaborated on several murals, including From Incarceration to Liberation and the Anti-Eviction Mural in San Francisco, as well as directing the creation of the Glenview Elementary School Mural with her students in Oakland.