Born: New York City
Currently based: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
mlongartist@gmail.com
505.310.5890
2008 MFA University of Colorado
2004 BFA College of Santa Fe
1986-87 Art Students League of New York under Richard Pousette-Dart.
35 years of dedicated painting practice having exhibited in New York, Santa Fe and beyond.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Michael Long is a Santa Fe based painter creating his own totemic language. Symbolic and vivid, his paintings transmute kaleidoscopic visions of a world of wonder.
Guided by an intuitive and inquisitive mind, Long is tuned toward the mystic language inherent within everyday life. A long time practitioner of Tarot, Long approaches each of his paintings as individual Tarot cards. Each work is meant to evoke an immediate effect on the viewer, be it emotional, psychological or spiritual. Working from the hazy place between what is known and what is felt, Long acts as a conduit: each work feels full of possibility, a language of exuberance waiting to be interpreted by the viewer.
There is a similar exuberant urgency to the way Long paints. An avid daily painter, Long works diligently; keeping journals and notebooks brimming with drawings. Long is constantly filtering inspiration from the world around him into his visual art practice. Working with paint and other media, his work feels firmly rooted in the ground on which it was made while gesturing toward a wild beyond.