Portrait of Michaela Keiser Print

“ As an artist, I try to breathe honesty into each brush stroke. There are many things that inspire my work, but environmental activism and phenomenology as a process are the forces that I feel most strongly about. I am a landscape painter painting in oil, acrylic and watercolors as these materials help bring air into my painting and also slow me down, making me look closely at patterns and movements. These, when translated through paint hope to ask and invite the viewer to look closely at the environment they are in. Through this process of engagement, either consciously or sub-subconsciously, I want to make people more aware of the spaces that they occupy, such that they are actively looking and not just seeing. This act of looking, of awareness, of contemplation is what I want my viewers to perform. I believe it is the first step in instigating any form of hope.” I think of myself as primarily a landscape painter who works en plein air. In the recent year, my focus has shifted more towards understanding the medium of paint to talk about environmental activism. My recent work is guided by this search, in which understanding and abstracting space through color, tone and line have been her primary focus. I have been trying to portray the relationships humans have with their environment and believes that acts of awareness and mindful seeing can be instigated through art in a way that incites action. I was born in Ambala, a small town in the northern part of India. After my initial education here, I completed my high school from The Heritage School, an experiential learning school in the National capital region of India. It is here that I first learned the possibilities that life and art held.