Mike Meares

I am an artist who is Illinois raised, California aged and new to Indy.  I grew up in the small town of Eureka, Illinois.  I always enjoyed drawing as a child, and it helped keep me entertained throughout my school years.  My notebooks were always littered with more doodles than notes.  After High School, I decided to pursue a degree in art and got a BFA in Studio Art from Southern Illinois University.  Shortly after my college years, I moved to San Francisco and lived in the Bay Area for 14 years, where I grew as an artist and started a family.  I relocated to Indianapolis with my family in the summer of 2019, where I am continuing my journey as an artist, chasing inspirations, investigating the depths of my mind and creating bold artwork out of it.

 

I am a musically inspired painter working mostly in pastels.  My artwork focuses on the exploration of the imagination with themes rooted in the emotions and experiences of life. My images are very dreamlike. The power of line is an overlying force, combining with bold colors, shapes, and abstracted negative spaces to create interesting compositions.  

 

I typically like to work very spontaneously when first creating an image, often using music to inspire the first marks on paper or canvas and then building the painting and the narrative from there.  With this method, i find that i am able to explore more freely within my own self while also allowing the viewer to more easily identify and attach to the artwork from their own experience.  I encourage people not just to assume or attempt to understand my purpose for a piece, but to challenge themselves to feel ownership over their perceptions of the artwork.