Coral Bay Painting

Michael Fitzhugh Wright was born in New Rochelle, New York on December 3, 1931 and is one of the few artists' still alive from the Abstract Expressionism movement of the 1940’s and 1950’s. He began painting at the age of seven. By the age of seventeen, people took notice of his talent and he received a full art scholarship to Yale Music and Art School in New Haven, Connecticut. Upon graduation, Michael went on to further his career by attending Albright Art School and the Brooklyn Museum School. Mr. Wright proudly served his country in the Korean War and officially began his career as a painter in New York City in 1954. As a young painter, he was a friend and colleague of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and David Smith in the famous days of the Cedar Bar and Eighth Street Art Club. He studied with Paul Brach through the New School and showed in several Tenth Street galleries with Howard Kanovitz, Aristodimos Kaldis, Earl Kerkam and Philip Pavia. After ten years in New York City, he moved to East Hampton. There, Michael did odd jobs to make ends meet, but still managed to paint. Through a mutual friend, Wright was given a job as the personal assistant for Willem de Kooning from 1964 through 1967. While in East Hampton, Wright had several solo shows at the Guild Hall and in 1966 won the prestigious Long Island Painter's Award. Although he has remained lifelong friends with de Kooning, he wanted to further explore his own personal vision and did not want to be identified as a regional Long Island painter. In 1972, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Feeling the need to be closer to nature, Wright moved his studio in 1976 to the isolation of the woods in Barnstead, New Hampshire. For the next ten years he continued to expand his expression through the personal use of the line, the stroke, and the paint itself, creating well-defined groupings of forms, always influenced by nature. He has traveled extensively throughout Europe, North Africa, the Caribbean, Indonesia, and India. Traveling has always provided him with new inspiration for his work. Wright's first visit to the Southwest in 1974 left an impression on him. Intrigued by the clarity of light and variety of forms, he made annual visits and finally moved his studio to Santa Fe in 1986. Wright has always loved to explore the land, as well as paint the forms of nature, to hunt for birds and to fish in the streams.