Pablo Picasso once asked ( rhetorically, of course ), “Why do two colors, one put next to the other, sing?” Good ol’ Pablo had no answer, nor do I.  But they do.  Color calls out to us, reaches out to something in our spirit and psyche, evoking emotion.  Not every artist gets color, how different hues complement and interact with each other.  Michelle Armas gets it.  She gets it and puts it on canvas for all the world to see and enjoy.

Michelle began professional life, not as an artist, but in graphic design and corporate branding in New York.  Talk about baptism by fire!  To help cope with the stress of working in NYC, Michelle began painting.  After about a year, she decided to trade the corporate world for the art world and began painting full-time.

Her canvases explode with color, joyous, juicy and fluid.  It’s as if she’s captured the hues of the warmth of a sunny day, of being a kid again, running and jumping with full abandon.

Lovely, sketchy scribbles and seemingly-spontaneous pops of color remind us what it was like before we were “taught” to draw and color– that magical time when we, as young children, were only concerned with the feel of the crayon on paper, fascinated by the variety in our Crayola 64.  We weren’t trying to create anything.. we were just completely submerged in the process of creating.

Filled with the colors of poppies and popsicles, sundaes and springtime, her work does sing.  Sappy, happy love songs, you know, the ones that we all know the words to.  Because we recognize this artist’s vocabulary– these are stories of pure color, that speak to the very basic of creative instincts that began deep within all of us.  They sing us a sparkling lullaby as we bask in their sunshine, dreaming of coloring in the clouds.

To see more of Michelle Armas’ work, check out her website and be sure to stop by her blog.  Her writing style is as cheeky and colorful as her paintings.