Timeline

Michele Gage is a contemporary American artist based in Pound Ridge, New York. Working primarily in watercolor, she studied with Henry C. Pearson at The New School, New York, with Hannah Ferenbach at Silvermine Arts Center, New Canaan CT and calligraphy with Sensei Shotei Ibata in Kyoto, Japan. She holds a PHD in Mathematics Education from New York University (1983) and taught mathematics and mathematics education at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology (1974-1997) and Manhattanville College, Purchase NY (1997-2001) Her painting is a solution to a visual problem or puzzle, where the problem is broken into small segments to solve spontaneously. They are based (abstracted) on her bad photographs and loosely transferred using the classical grid interpreting the contents of squares, but often before all squares are filled, the big picture solution “clicks” into place, and the piece is done. The finished image is not photo-realism, but is clearly from nature, an object very different from each of its parts, yet each part retains its own character and unique relationship to its neighbors and the whole. It is also a commentary on the way we see. Looking at the whole is not the same as looking at the parts.