I was born in Washington D.C. in 1953, and grew up in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, which at the time consisted of modest brick split-levels and ramblers encroaching on the boundary lines of old neglected farms. Today it is a sprawl of highways and endless McMansions.  My 50's and 60's childhood figures prominently in my paintings.
Though I have been drawing and painting my whole life I didn't have my first serious solo exhibition (in New York) until I was 32. I moved to Brooklyn in 1979 after attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. My studio in Brooklyn is still in the same building I first moved into.  Over the past 20 years I've had shows in New York, Los Angeles, and Italy.
My paintings have always had a middle-class suburban America feel about them. And purposefully so. Though I love the paintings of, de Kooning, Picasso, Cezanne, Manet, Goya, and other giants of western art, I also love Norman Rockwell and the earnest simple charm of 40's and 50's children's book illustrations. Also, I like seeing the kinds of paintings everyday people place in their homes; Paintings that are pretty, and match the décor. It would be amazing to see a Francis Bacon oil in someone's suburban split-level but you never do, of course.   You see sailboat paintings and dog portraits.  Snow scenes and birds in trees. That sort of thing. I want to make that part of my work, but not as kitsch or something to be condescending about. Instead, I see it all as part of a visual vocabulary that shapes us and reveals something about who we are as individuals and as a culture.

For more information, please visit www.mikecockrill.com