Michael Kessler

Michael Kessler was born in 1954 in Hanover, Pennsylvania. He received a B.F.A. degree from Kutztown University. He currently lives and works in New Mexico. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions from New York, to Sweden, to Los Angeles.

Personal histories, voyages, and discoveries are transported and communicated through process, mark making, and visceral expression in the work of Michael Kessler. His paintings offer a transparent view of their journey as their paintings become. Select areas of intended color combine with palettes inspired by nature. Activated compositions pulsate with energy, yet are grounded with structure, line, and open space.

Michael Kessler’s acrylic on panel paintings utilize numerous translucent and transparent layers to crystallize his abstract, gestural, and geometric configurations. With a meditative focus, he pours, scrapes, smooths, tapes, and sands the paint to reveal biomorphic entities. Kessler draws from his connection to the New Mexican landscape, branches, leaves, and trees. In his latest series, a wholeness is achieved through his integration of nature and structure – cellular, organic forms are contained and revealed through soft cream and bright golden segments.

AWARDS / FELLOWSHIPS

Rome Prize, Painting, American Academy in Rome , 1990

Pollock/Krasner Award, Painting, New York, New York, 1992

Whitney Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, 1977

Awards in the Visual Arts-Five, Grant in Painting, South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art, 1985

Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Grant in Painting, 1983

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