MFR/Artist

Solo exhibit, "From Here to There" closed at The Oklahoma Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City this March 20th 2008. New works, "Taking Flight" were on display at M.A. Doran Gallery in Tulsa, April 10th - May 1 2008. ________________________ Currently, a new poetry film short is in the works with Austin Tolin Films and musician Amir Baghiri, scheduled to come out this September 2008. A new installation exhibit will be on display this October at The Gallery, Tulsa Performing Arts Center. ARTIST WEBSITE: www.michellefirmentreid.com Click Here _________________________________________________"I am an experimental artist. I also write poetry. My studio exists in a once brothel, known as The May Rooms, residing in Tulsa until 1978. In my painting process, layers of paint shape and reshape themselves with the use of texture, line and color to evoke emotion. Through trial and change, I incorporate paint, writing, and mixed media into my work. I enjoy the process of building up and breaking down a painting, while having layers of meaning and symbolism. Moving to Oklahoma from the East Coast over a decade ago, the large open sky is a strong influence in some of my recent paintings. I find a sense of visual freedom when using the symbolic gesture of flight as birds represent a gift for my thoughts to fly from. Handwriting gives a voice to my work; reaching the surface of the painting as an almost vanishing commentary. There is a feeling of nostalgia here as I replay memories in my mind, and places I have seen. The inability to read the writing clearly is purposeful, leading the imagination in multiple directions.I love the fluidity and freedom of paint; the way it feels along the soft tip of my brush, or the hard edge of my palette knife moving across the surface, pushing along and finding space between idle thoughts or intense emotions, then settling in. Then when the paint is nearly dry, turning the brush around to its wooden tip, scraping back into a field of color, unveiling traces of moments captured in time; paint speaks volumes in the silence where the still and quiet trace of a bristle or flat outline of a palette knife holds the viewer for a moment in time. For myself, painting is a forgiving 'give and take' relationship on wet ground when once dry, reflects back to the viewer's eye the affair on open canvas whose fate waits on others. I have already let go, pushing along another edge, coming close to flying.I hope my paintings speak to you, as you find yourself there, sometimes flooded by the paint, giving a sense of loss and then found again like distant memories. The script is often cut away, preventing full flight. We are all grounded, though many of us seek to fly like birds; having deep yearnings of taking wings and finding freedom, but inevitably falling back due to gravity’s pull." ~ MFR 2008 _________________________ARTIST WEBSITE: www.michellefirmentreid.com Click Here _________________________..