I make colorful, mid- to large-scale portraits of people in my community using a collage underpainting finished with oil paint to add detail and depth. Each portrait begins with layers — fragments of text, pattern, and image — that build the foundation of a face before a single brushstroke of oil paint touches the canvas. The result is a surface that rewards a long look.
I make this work to witness everyday people in the United States as they liberate and transform themselves during the country's descent into fascism, and as they imagine a better future. These are not famous people. They are neighbors, organizers, elders, and dreamers — people whose stories rarely get told at this scale.
This work matters because community is the antidote to fascism. I make community visible and tell their stories, so that we are reminded of what we are fighting for.
Michelle Major is an award-winning Milan Art Institute-trained
mixed media artist based just outside Chicago. She creates portrait-driven work
that explores liberation, imagination, and resilience. After a global career in
science, she returned to art with a renewed commitment to storytelling, social
consciousness, and creating work that honors the complexities of everyday
people.
Her current focus is a growing body of multimedia portraits
that combine collage and oil paint. These works begin with layers of paper that
hold images, textures, and fragments of history and that become the foundation
for the painted figure. She builds from the inside out, letting torn edges and
unexpected color shape the emotional terrain of each portrait before adding the
final layers of paint. The process mirrors the themes at the core of the
project: how identity is built, how beauty and struggle coexist, and how we
imagine ourselves into futures not yet visible.
Her work is shaped by her commitment to abolition, social
justice, and centering the inherent beauty of humans and the natural world—threads
that run through both her studio practice and her community work.
