Misha Milchenko Art

About

I am a multimedia painter who works primarily with acrylic paint and clay. I work with multimedia because it allows me to explore texture, and to blur the lines between art and craft. I use hot glue with high precision to add textural details to acrylic paintings, as well as to affix clay to canvas.

My imagery is organic, featuring fantastical humanoid figures, plants and animals. My color palette is bright and vibrant, often unnatural or heightened for the subject matter. I enjoy the freedom of folk art, which often merges people, plants and animals into fantastical shapes without regard for accuracy.  

As a lifelong immigrant and LGBT person, I use art to try and communicate my reality and my fantasy to those around me. I am an outsider in many ways, unable to show a different, vital part of myself to any of my communities. Art is the simplest and fullest way to show another person who I am. I explore forms and media to mirror my exploration of the cultures of which I sit of at the periphery.

I ask the viewer to interact physically with my paintings to challenge the notion of art as untouchable. I would like the viewer to be not only a viewer, but an audience. Art is part of life, not apart from life; it should be touched, moved and held. It craves touch like any living being. Organic figures, made of clay, formed with fingers, felt by fingers – life upon life. My art also becomes a way for people to touch each other, as they trace the same forms with their fingers, and are united in the same experience.