Michelle Silver in her studio, 2025. Photo by Bradley 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—often portraying a dream or memory—as a platform to connect larger themes of motherhood, trauma, mental health, desire, and fear.
Silver’s practice explores the connection of physicality, paint and surface. 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 participated in group exhibitions throughout the United States and UK including at Rochester University, NY; Art Number 23 Gallery, London, UK; IDIO Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Artport Kingston, NY; Vivid Space, San Diego, CA; Gallery Protocol, Gainesville, FL; The Raw Canvas, Grand Junction, CO; and upcoming Concord Center for the Visual Arts Museum, Concord, MA. She has had solo exhibitions at Greenpoint Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2015) and Super Secret Projects, Beacon, NY (2023) and Distortion Society, Beacon, NY (2025). Silver has been commissioned by Chase Contemporary, NYC, and her work is part of the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection. She has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions including work by Evan Paul English, Nico Mazza, Frances Segismundo and Taj Campman. Her painting and curation have been included in publications including The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Cool Hunting, Times Union, Two Coats of Paint, Art Business News, The Highlands Current, and Chronogram.
Press
