A native of Denver, Colorado, Michelle La Perrière knew she would be an artist as a child. She has lived in Maryland since 1987, when she moved to Baltimore for graduate study with Grace Hartigan at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her drawings, paintings, prints and mixed media collages combine image fragments from visual source materials with observed and imagined forms and spaces. Her work has been shown in the United States, France and Japan, and is in private and public collections including Syracuse University and the Borg-Warner Corporation.

Beginning her studies at The University of Colorado, Boulder, and Parsons School of Design, New York, she went on to receive her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has received Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Art and Culture, numerous MICA faculty development grants, and MICA’s award for Excellence in Teaching. Selected residencies include the Jentel Artist Residency, Banner, Wyoming (twice), The Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences, Rabun Gap, Georgia, The Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, New York, and The International Program for Artists in Rochefort en Terre, Brittany, France. She has been teaching at MICA since 1992, and served as Co-Chair of the Foundation Department for ten years (2000 to 2010).

How do we hold it all? All of it?
Without breaking?
With acceptance and at times, reverence?
Whatever it is.
The death. The flood. The fire.
External. Internal.
There is disruption. There was shattering. There will be splintering.
And yet. There is –
The bloom within the weeds. The sparkle and gentle lap of the water. The light and warmth from the blaze.

My work is about witnessing and watching, about feeling and capturing the complexities of this time, and that time, and the time before. As both a person and an artist, I am guided by awareness, presence, and responsiveness. My practice grows out of mindfulness – listening inwardly while also attending to others and to the world around me. I strive to meet each moment openly, allowing shifting energies, environments, and relationships to shape the work as it emerges.

Images from personal photographs, books, and contemporary magazines are incorporated with fragments from historical references, elements drawn from nature, and objects from observation. In combination, the resultant work evokes the magic of alchemy, critical transformation for growth, and acceptance of what is and what has been.

Touch is paramount, its fullness celebrated. In addition to rendering with intimate focus – graphite, paint, or cut paper and glue gentling a surface, the mercurial mark is welcome – scrawls of energetic bursts, allowed. Physical contact, in combination with image and space, enables the interwoven existence of past, present, and future, dream and despair, grief and healing.

Drawing, painting, and collage are at the heart of my practice. They are at once contemplative and expressive – processes of slowing down, noticing, receiving, and welcoming whatever is there – rather than warding off the painful, or pursuing fixed outcomes. The quiet and subtle exist along with the charged and intense, giving form to inner states comingling with external impressions. My work is less about foreseeing a product and more about cultivating an experience, allowing the image to emerge through the process itself. Each piece becomes a record of presence, a record of dialogue between self, surroundings, and connection with others.

I seek to open spaces where body, mind, and spirit are all welcome – spaces that invite reflection, grounding, and a deepened sense of connection. In this way, my work becomes more than mark-making and capturing a recognizable image. It becomes a shared act of awareness, an opportunity to encounter presence together.

I seek to open spaces where body, mind, and spirit are all welcome – spaces that invite reflection, grounding, and a deepened sense of connection. In this way, drawing becomes more than mark-making; it becomes a shared act of awareness, an opportunity to encounter presence together.