This month artist Michelle Radford receives double praise for her talents: first, winning the Dazzling Dahlia Festival poster competition; and second, being selected for The Laurel’s September cover.
Michelle’s paintings pay tribute to the beauty of the grand gardens and epic landscapes on our beautiful Plateau. Nature always played an influence in her work, leading her into an MFA at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design). Her thesis focused on Hudson River Dutch painters and their communication, based on landscape as language.
Regional flora, particularly dahlias, are among Michelle’s passions.
She says, “I love seeing the varieties of dahlias that skilled hybridizers are coaxing into being. It’s a reminder that creativity continues to generate more creativity, and beauty leads to more beauty. As an artist, painting dahlias is such a joy because each petal becomes a brush stroke, and the rich and nuanced colors of the flowers show off the capabilities of the paint pigments.”
As a multi‑disciplinary artist, she renders her images on paper, canvas, and fabric. She often intermingles them with hand‑crafted antiquities of thread, fiber, and lace selected from her fiber‑artist lineage or other past women’s work.
What binds her vistas, paint, and needlework takes Michelle back to high school when she fell in love with landscapes. She was enraptured with majestic mountains and towering trees dancing against glorious, gargantuan skies.
She believes trees are anthropomorphic, saying, “In landscapes, we associate sky with something transcendent in its gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. We feel a state of grace, a calling to our souls. We are part of the earth and become separate. We have a homeness in nature. And trees are as alive as we are.”
“I am never bored,” says Michelle. “I look at flower petals and say, ‘How shall I paint that?’ Then the color shifts, and I dive deeper into its tones, hues, tints. I laugh and say I might fall over a cliff just paying attention to the endless grace, beauty, and color of a bloom.”
Note to our cover artist: Pack a parachute!
Michelle Radford
Being an artist while bearing children requires another kind of chute. Michelle’s painting was forced to downsize when her daughter and twin boys came along. Small handwork and quick sketches were few and far between. But down the maternal road, little ones started kindergarten‑ing, and mother went back to painting‑gardening.
Family‑raising reminded her of how women throughout history managed parenting while tending to their own creative desires. Doilies, handkerchiefs, cross‑stitch, quilt squares — smallish things — were manageable, finished in reasonable time.
Michelle’s current project is using the language of metaphor.
She says, “I am a woman who desires painting landscapes, but I also engage my family in what I do and how it slots into the world. A lot of women feel that challenge. I couldn’t give up. I kept trying to do both while fearing I couldn’t. But I blended landscape (nature, beauty, connection to the earth, soul) into my textiles, techniques, materials. This is a way to enrich motherhood and family life. These aspects of living don’t have to fight each other. They can be stitched together literally and figuratively.”
Metaphorically, our fertile Earth‑o‑pedia is right outside our door.
For more information about Michelle Berg Radford and her work, please visit michellebergradford.com or follow her on Instagram at @michelle.radford.
Join us on Tuesday, September 8, at 5:30 P.M. at High Country Wine & Provisions to meet Michelle and celebrate her Laurel cover.
Favorites Count: 0