Michael Branca
About the artist
website: www.mikebranca.com

Michael Branca

About Michael's Residency

In five weeks as the ridiculously lucky Artist-in-Residence at the Carina House on Monhegan Island, Maine, I completed my first eighteen oil landscapes. I took on the challenge of working outside as a way of improving my skills as a painter. I thought I'd enjoy the process, but I did not expect to fall in love with it the way I did. I understand now the compulsive drive that leads a person to spend a lifetime painting the landscape. Whole days spent rooted in a beautiful spot, trying to keep up with nature. Chasing the light, racing the tides, fighting the fog. I can't imagine ever getting it completely right, but I'm sure I'm not done trying.

Bio

Michael Branca is a contemporary Maine artist. His preferred media and subject matter span a broad spectrum, from large fantastical oil paintings to en plein air landscapes to small conceptual assemblages. His work often addresses the human feeling of disconnectedness with nature, and attempts to find beauty, joy and humor in the unexpected, mundane and common.

Branca was born in Milton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Colby College and attended Temple University/ Tyler School of Art in Rome. He has been awarded residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center and Monhegan's Carina House, and is currently the Artist in Residence at Southern Maine Community College. His work shows regularly in prominant and obscure galleries and museums.

Modified Artist's Statement

The focus of much of my work is on the struggle of the individual to find harmony in and among each of his/her worlds - the natural world, the people world, and the self world. Within each of these spheres, we sometimes feel at home but too often feel out of place. Through my paintings and mixed-media pieces, I seek to explore these relationships. My visual stories have no one plot-line, but rather are intended to evoke within the viewer some sense of my simultaneous awe and discomfort in functioning in the worlds that surround me.