Michael Deeb: Tranquility, Paintings of Quiet Spaces

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Contemporary Luminist Michael Deebs

Born in Seattle, Michael graduated from Western Washington University in 1984 (B.A. Education: Art/Eng.). During his early years at Western he served as staff illustrator for the Western Front newspaper. He ran an original comic series, “Take Two”, viewed as a “hybrid of Archie and Doonesbury”. He also did commissions in previous years at Skagit Valley College in Mount Vernon, Washington. Other early illustrations work was featured in the University of Washington student newspaper in the late 1970’s.

Commissions began in 1968 at age 14 with a cover illustration for Skagit Speedway’s Racing Annual. Other cover illustrations have included local publication from agricultural reviews, community service organizations, and public events brochures and magazines. A couple examples are Fourth Corner View magazine and a Premier Graphics’ desk pad calendar.

Michael is largely self-taught, his interest in art began in his youth. He received inspiration from his grandmother, Florence Jackson Cunningham, a celebrated Northwest artist in the late 1940s through the early 1980s. He also briefly attended the Music and Art Foundation’s Creative Art School for children in Seattle, a loosely-structured Saturday workshop format. (Admission was by portfolio, and the sessions were free.)

He received some formal training in 1994 in a summer landscape painting workshop under William Elston with the academy of Realist Art in Seattle (now the Gage Institute). He also attended a Joseph McGurl painting workshop through the Copley Society of Boston in 1999. (McGurl is a Copley Master affiliated with the New American Luminists.) Other stylistic influences include Winslow Homer, Maxfield Parrish, and contemporary masters Peter Poskas and David Ligare. Michael enjoys painting a variety of subjects in a realist style founded on time-honored principles, including the golden mean. He employs traditional painting techniques, such as glazing, to achieve the luminosity he desires. Many of his previous works are in private collections and several hand in corporate spaces.

Partial list of galleries, etc. Michael has been affiliated with:

Blue Horse Gallery: 2010, 1999, 1995, 1988. First Place: Public Hanging: Painting, 2010

Meloy and Company Gallery: 1990 – 2005 (intermittent)

Mark Bergsma Gallery: 2004

Hammann’s Gallery: 1997

Allied Arts of Whatcom County: 1995

Solo Exhibits:

Blue Horse Gallery: 2010

Fairhaven Rug Gallery: 2005

Organic Press, WA: 2004

Wild Mountain Café, Seattle: 2003

Nimbus Restaurant: 2003