Artist Portfolio Magazine’s 20 Art Competition

Michele Ramirez – Oakland, CA

I grew up in the Central Valley surrounded by natural color fields. Crop rotations regularly presented different forms and textures, and each season brought new colors in blocks and rows. These geometric structures and planes that formed the wide-open landscape of my youth have always played strongly in my imagination and compositions.

I look at relatively empty fields which stand in stark opposition to a sterile sky and contrast them to the complex blocks and lines of the city. The highways and roads slicing through the landscape divide and order space into the most elemental forms of drawing and painting. These lines and structures bear the weight of my compositions. Color ties them to emotion. In my paintings, elements of abstraction and formal structure are incorporated to lend ambiguity to the implied narrative of each piece. The story is left to the viewer.