Michelle Silver in her studio, 2025. Photo by Bradley Silver.

about michelle silver

Michelle Silver paints emotional landscapes that combine steadied intention with bursts of full throttle frenetic motion. Sometimes figurative, sometimes abstract, her painted worlds exist in the space between the conscious and subconscious, in the area guided by intuition. Silver uses the intimacy and vulnerability of her experiences as a platform to connect larger themes of motherhood, trauma, mental health, desire, and fear. She works in alternating sessions of strategy and surrender, moving through the work in exaggerated strokes of thick paint applied with a silicone tool before it is smeared, slashed, and scraped away. Her layered work vibrates with the mode of its creation: rage, despair, ecstasy, power – a complex and sometimes convoluted display of the female and motherhood experience.

Raised in the Catskill Mountains of New York, Michelle Silver (b. 1987) is a painter, curator and graphic designer living and working in the Hudson Valley, NY. She is the Gallery Director of Distortion Society, a combined art gallery and tattoo studio in Beacon, NY that she founded in 2023 with her tattoo artist husband Bradley Silver.

Silver has exhibited throughout the US and in the UK; she has had four solo exhibitions, most recently a public art exhibition with ChaShaMa in the lobby of 1155 6th Avenue, NYC. She has been commissioned by Chase Contemporary, is featured in the Visionary Projects Directory and is a Finalist in the Spring 2025 Homiens Art Prize. Her work is part of the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection and in private collections throughout the United States and in Australia. Her painting and curation have been included in publications such as The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Cool Hunting, Arts to Hearts Project, Times Union, Two Coats of Paint, Artscope Magazine, Art Business News, and Chronogram.