Michael Garfield

Michael Garfield myspace • Michael Garfield blog

Since November of 2007, Michael has painted at concerts in a legendary range of situations, from basement clubs to the deep Nevada desert to NASA's Ames Research Center – both onstage and off, and alongside internationally renowned visionary artists Alex & Allyson Grey, Mark Henson, Kris D, J Garcia,Oliver Vernon, Andrew Jones, Amanda Sage, Xavi, and Mars-1.  He is the resident live painter and concert poster artist for ActionPacker Pro Productions in New Orleans, has been featured (in many cases, repeatedly) at theWakarusa Festival, Sonic Bloom Festival, Rothbury Festival (as a part of IAMU's ReSOurce Center), Global Sound Conference, Trinumeral Festival,Gem & Jam, and Rocky Mountain Crystallization Festival...and has held live painting residencies at the Trilogy Lounge in Boulder CO (February - August 2008) and the Mondrian Hotel's Pere La Chaise Lounge in Scottsdale AZ (March - May 2009). Recently he has assumed responsibility as a de facto journalist and organizer for the growing live art community.

Michael’s improvised live paintings are hand-illustrated with pens (and without computers or measuring tools) during concerts.  Each painting grows according to an evolving visual genome, translated from the throb of the house and the crowd into cross-sections of fireworks and undersea faeries, closed-eye tessellations and luminous fossils…vivid scenes of unabashed intensity, verdant and exultant imagery written in the natural language of dreams.  Reflecting his training as a scientific illustrator, Michael’s live art is a field guide to the beings that emerge at the energetic nexuses of live music…the boundary-living electric winged spirits that crash into being through a dancing throng while he is a seismograph and portraitist, swaying to their breath.

 

"[Michael's] illustrating, as Huxley would say, the 'antipodes' of the Divine Imagination."  - Alex Grey, visionary artist

"Totally unique." - Michael Travis (EOTO, Zilla, SCI)