MICHAEL STEIRNAGLE
Body Language
MAR 7 - 21, 2025
Opening Reception
Friday, Mar 7, 4 - 7pm
In the ’70s, Michael Steirnagle worked as an advertising art director and started his own graphic design studio, leading to an 18-year freelance illustration career. He created realistic album covers, book jackets, and commissions for clients like the Lyric Opera, Shedd Aquarium, and Major League Baseball. Transitioning to fine art, Michael was inspired by Bay Area Figurative Movement artists like Richard Diebenkorn, blending realism with abstraction. His focus shifted to expressive, narrative painting, capturing body language and using settings like beaches, cafés, and bars to play with shapes.
Michael typically works from photographs, assembling mosaics of shapes and building texture with paint. The more abstract the figures, the more playful his work becomes. Drawing from his many years of teaching life drawing and painting, he emphasizes the importance of helping students while pushing his own artistic boundaries. Now living in Indian Wells, California, Michael’s surroundings, including his Midcentury Modern home, inspire poolside scenes and architectural elements in his work.
“I paint people, color, abstract shapes and light. People are initially drawn to a work of art by its shapes, values and colors—not by the subject matter which is secondary. My hope is that the viewer will find pleasure in the arrangement of shapes, colors and textures of the painting as well as in its subject which emerges, disappears and re-emerges throughout the work.” – Michael Steirnagle