I had the great pleasure of visiting Michelle and her husband at their home and studio in Zurich before I relocated to Boston. I have known Michelle for a short time, through mutual friends that I have enjoyed working with in Zurich. But that’s all it took… After a very short time of meeting both Michelle and her husband you feel like you have known them for a million years. They are both very kind and gentle artists, pasionate about life and their art. They have an incredible way of inviting you to their home and making you feel like you are the most welcome person in the world.

I was lucky enough to stop by one day, on short notice and having the opportunity to shoot them in the world they made and change evry day. The house was fantastic, the studio grand, and Michelles paitings speak for themselves!

Thank you both, I hope to see you soon!

From www.michellebird.ch:

Michelle Bird: fusion of colors and cultures

Hot lava pours into the sea, volcanic glass fragments mix with black sand beaches – as a young child Michelle Bird stood at the edge of strong cultural tides, inheriting her Chinese artist father’s classical eye and her Western mother’s courage with bold architectural form. Described as “tactile and erotic,” abstract expressionist Bird’s paintings radiate the fusion of cultures and colors.

Michelle Bird came early to her love of color as she leaned barefoot into the ocean wind hunting the last subtle green flash in her Hawaiian sunset. When her family moved to California she added the texture of old growth Redwood forests, San Francisco fogs, plump grape vines and desert silt. Her paintings reflect a wide palette of almost Baroque colors. “I paint fervently for long intervals,” says the artist, “as if I were walking blindfolded through nature, feeling the color with my skin.”

Educated in California and the Netherlands, she studied with Dutch poet and painter Anton Martineau and at the Rietveld Art Academy. Recognized in Europe and California, she has lectured at ‘San Francisco’s Academy of Art College’ on drawing techniques. Her work has been shown at Gallery Retort in Amsterdam, Gallery Walls in Amsterdam, Castle Maurick in Vught, The Netherlands, and The Depot Art Gallery in California. In 2003, she received an award from the Californian ‘Center for Contemporary Arts’ in Sacramento. As an illustrator, she has been published by the Dutch & Belgium publications ‘Joie de Vivre’ and ‘Spuit 11.’ She gained international attention for her drawings in the book ‘Closed Curtains — Lives of de Wallen’.

Bird’s work is represented in private and corporate collections in the United States, Switzerland and The Netherlands, including those of AXA Insurance and SEC.

Her studio in Switzerland is on the outskirts of Zurich adjacent to a forested hill, where she has lived with her husband since 2004. Her daughter studies art at Berkeley.

Michelle Bird speaks English, Dutch, and German; and holds a San Francisco Bay Skippers rating.

She can be contacted directly or through her agent, Holger Leverentz.

Text by Kristin Shannon

Curator of Louvre expat exhibit 2007

Michelle’s Art Links:
www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/m/michellebird
www.michellebird.ch
www.mapmagazine.ch
www.antonmartineau.com
www.kunstinwinterthur.com