Female with Hope Print

Michelle Merritt is a realism artist based in Houston, Texas, known for using charcoal and mixed media to create detailed portrait drawings. As a child, Michelle drew and created craft projects in all her spare time. Her high school art classes helped her explore her passion for drawing, which led to winning art competitions, including the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, art auctions, and scholarships. During college, Michelle continued to draw while earning a BS in Architecture and a BA in Mathematics from the University of Texas in Austin.  Now back in Houston, Michelle's obsession with drawing people continues- capturing the subject, and adding personal touches to bring them to life. Her portraits are created through a rich contrast of highlights and shadows that mimic the lightness and darkness that we experience as humans on a daily basis.  Her current body of work uses charcoal to explore vulnerability, strength, femininity, working through our shadows, and finding a glimmer of hope even in the darkest of times. After this year with a global pandemic, tragedy, and calls for social and racial justice, we have become more aware of the importance of self-care and mental health. Michelle is interested in how we work through our trauma and dark spaces to find our inner light. During these hard times, we have the potential to build empathy and meaningful connections. Her drawings aim to consider the question - How much light do you want to shed on your shadows for others to see?  Michelle's artwork has appeared in blogs such as Art Feeds Souls, and has been exhibited in Houston galleries, including Archway Gallery, Glade Gallery, Hardy & Nance Studios, and The Weekend Gallery. My current drawing series, Spread Radiant Light, is a look at how we let our past shape us and how we choose to share who we are with the world. I am interested in how we can get in touch with the parts of ourselves that have been repressed (our shadows or dark side), find our inner light, and begin to heal. I use charcoal in my artwork to excavate the contrast of highlights and shadows. The heavy layer of charcoal creates the black backgrounds that serve as the dark voids in our life that we still need to explore. These shadows frame the highlights on each woman’s face, hair, and arms, which I have chosen to illuminate with great intention. The charcoal process is messy and somewhat painful, which symbolizes the often messy and painful process of dealing with our trauma.