We were lucky to catch up with Michael Newberry recently and have shared our conversation below.

Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

What does rapture look like? “Transparency: The Space Series” is a life-size figure painting project that I started last year and is still ongoing. It features figures in different states of connectedness, creation, and fulfillment, set against backgrounds of nebuli, stars, and planets. The goal of the project is to convey moments where universality and extraordinary private emotions combine to become ends in themselves.
I use technical elements such as line, transparency, body language, and color theory as metaphors for boundaries, psychological openness, authentic expression, and visual splendor. Transparency is the key concept that facilitates integrating the figures into their space backgrounds and doubles as my moral belief in human transparency.
Wonderful models brought beauty, care, and enthusiasm to the project by collaborating with me to find the right expressive pose through quick sketches and reference photos. For the background, I used NASA images and obtained individual astrophotographers’ permission to use their photos. My hope is that this project will allow viewers to experience authenticity, creativity, and love through art.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a 17-year-old, 50 years ago, I sold my first of 800 artworks, and I majored in fine art at USC. However, I quit my junior year to focus on figure drawing in Den Haag, Holland. I was fortunate to feel strongly about my art and chose to pursue it no matter what. I have shown internationally, either with galleries, hosting my exhibitions, or with non-profit organizations.

I am inspired by artists such as Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and contemporaries Hiro Kiyoshima, Martine Vaguel, and Melvin Toledo. Perhaps the most important to me is Vincent Van Gogh, who pursued his art for its own sake.

Philosophically, Aristotle’s concept of Eudaemonia, a state of human flourishing, is intensely meaningful to me because it simply guides one to do the best that they can from where they are at. He reminds me of a benevolent and wise grandfather, always there to give me a pat on the back and words of encouragement and wisdom.

My lifetime artistic mission has been to explore, dream, and see as much and as far as I can. I aim to keep growing and trying things that seem beyond my reach. Behind it all, art is about the love, care, and the touch of my hand that I bring to each artwork.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

One of the things I have noticed about the art world is that it is extraordinarily cold-hearted. However, I think that perception arises from looking at society as a group rather than individual friends and collectors. Conversely, I can’t tell you how many times acquaintances have said that my works belong in a museum. The unstated implication is that in their view, society in the abstract should be the one to support my art. However, my perspective changes when I consider the roles that each individual person plays in creating a thriving ecosystem.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Art is truly an amazing human phenomenon as it combines emotion, thought, and senses into a concrete thing that, in turn, appeals to the viewer’s network of those three things. It is as if art is a therapist, philosopher, and lover rolled into one. I believe that it helps non-artists to think about art in those capacities and ask themselves, “What is this artwork showing me?”

Contact Info:

• Website: http://michaelnewberry.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artnewberry/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.newberry.12
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/NewberryArtist
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChAlblEsGUXow4Fr6Mcqprw
• Other: https://www.figuregroundgallery.com/newberry