🎨 About the Artist

Born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, Michael Kessler currently lives and works in New Mexico. After graduating from Kutztown University with a B.F.A., Kessler established his career as an artist, exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions from New York, to Sweden, to Los Angeles. His work has captured audiences since the 1980s and continues to be collected around the world.

Personal histories, voyages, and discoveries are transported and communicated through process, mark making, and visceral expression in the work of Michael Kessler. His paintings offer a transparent view of their journey as their paintings become. Select areas of intended color combine with palettes inspired by nature. Activated compositions pulsate with energy, yet are grounded with structure, line, and open space.

Kessler’s acrylic on panel paintings utilize numerous translucent and transparent layers to crystallize his abstract, gestural, and geometric configurations. With a meditative focus, he pours, scrapes, smooths, tapes, and sands the paint to reveal biomorphic entities. Kessler draws from his connection to the New Mexican landscape, branches, leaves, and trees. In his latest series, a wholeness is achieved through his integration of nature and structure – cellular, organic forms are contained and revealed through soft cream and bright golden segments.

Select Museum Collections

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania
Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, Austin, Texas
Broad Foundation, Los Angeles, California
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
Castellani Art Museum, Niagara Falls, New York
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio

DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts
Fine Arts Gallery, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
Flint Institute of the Arts, Flint, Michigan
Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Honolulu Academy of the Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii
Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Museum of Fine Arts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Solo Exhibitions

Gallery Mar, Park City, Utah
Paia Contemporary Gallery, Maui, Hawaii
Butters Gallery, Portland, Oregon
Patricia Rovzar Gallery, Seattle, Washington
Madison Gallery, La Jolla, California
Cheryl Hazan Gallery, NYC

Callan Contemporary, New Orleans, Louisiana
Russell Collection, Austin, Texas

Schmidt/Dean Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Dean Day Gallery, Houston, Texas
Joseph Gierek Fine Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Artamo, Santa Barbara, California

Gallery Bienvenu, New Orleans, Louisiana
Argazzi Art, Lakeville, Connecticut
Ann Korologos Gallery, Basalt, Colorado
Mark Gallery, Englewood, New Jersey
Lanoue Fine Art, Boston, Massachusetts

Select Corporate Collections

Vitale, Caturano & Company, Ltd., Boston, Ma.
Golden Artist Color, Berlin, New York
Pfizer Inc, New York, New York
PepsiCo, Camden, New Jersey
Price Waterhouse, Washington, D.C.
Boone County National Bank, Columbia, MO

Prudential Insurance Co., Newark, New Jersey
Regent Hotel, Hong Kong Exxon, Houston Texas
Comcast, Philadelphia, PA
Deloitte & Touché , Atlanta, Georgia
Austin Company, Cleveland, Ohio
El Paso Energy, Houston, Texas
Exxon Moble, Houston, Texas Young Conoway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP Wilmington DE
Ericsson, Gothengerg, Sweden
American Financial Group, NYC
First Union Bank, Phila. Pa.
Compaq Computer, Houston, Texas
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., Allentown, Pennsylvania
Bank of Boston, Boston