Michael K.Paxton, Interpolate #11 96" x 72" 2021

MIchael K. Paxton: Material Memory and the Appalachian Imagination

Michael K. Paxton is a Chicago-based artist whose work combines abstraction and figuration to address themes of place, survival, and psychological depth. Spanning over four decades, his artistic practice has ranged from intimate ink-on-film drawings to monumental mixed-media canvases. His visual language draws on the raw materiality of coal-country landscapes, bodily interiors, and symbolic memory, producing work that is both autobiographical and architectonic. Whether through dense layering or pared-down gestural forms, Paxton constructs a visual field where physicality and metaphor coexist.

His output is grounded in two profound autobiographical forces: his coal-country upbringing in West Virginia and his experience navigating a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. These lived experiences infuse his work with emotional intensity and conceptual clarity. Over time, he has cultivated a studio practice marked by formal experimentation, personal narrative, and an unrelenting engagement with surface, space, and meaning.

Paxton's association with the Matney Gallery has been one of deep collaboration. In 2016, the gallery presented Unleashing Instinct, a focused exhibition of his ink-on-drafting-film drawings. These visceral works revealed a transitional moment in his practice, blurring corporeal suggestion with raw abstraction. Paxton’s drawings from this period possess a kinetic immediacy—forms appear and dissolve in translucent layers, echoing bodily fragility and geological depth.h.

His work was later featured in Locus at the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art (Piedmont University, Georgia), a group exhibition curated by Matney Gallery that brought together artists from Virginia, Georgia, and Illinois. More recently, Paxton was among the artists included in Three Excellences of Culture: Painting, Poetry, and Music, the Work of Art Rosenbaum and Friends, a museum exhibition at the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts in Texas. Organized in collaboration with the Matney Gallery, the exhibition honored the legacy of the late Art Rosenbaum—a renowned painter, folklorist, and musician whose interdisciplinary work explored Southern traditions through richly narrative paintings and field recordings. Paxton’s inclusion underscored his alignment with Rosenbaum’s ethos of storytelling and cultural preservation. He contributed the 1994 painting The Sorghum Drinker, a work that resonated deeply with the exhibition's theme. The show featured Rosenbaum’s paintings alongside works by contemporaries such as Howard Finster and Margo Newmark Rosenbaum, and highlighted the intersections of visual art, poetry, and traditional music in American cultural expression. This project celebrated the narrative traditions of American painting and situated Paxton among a cross-generational group of artists connected by an interest in cultural memory and expressive gesture.

Michael K. Paxton with Interpolate Big Drawing #4 72” x 50” 2021

Paxton's work has also been presented at Current Art Fair (Richmond, Virginia), the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago—where he presented the solo exhibition Raw Reckoning—and at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, where his work was included in the retrospective exhibition Between Rock and an Art Place. He has also participated in numerous other solo and group exhibitions nationally. Notably, he held a major retrospective exhibition titled Captive Coal at the University Museum at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2024, surveying over three decades of work. His large-scale pieces were also featured in Interpolations at the Evanston Art Center in 2021 and in Interpolate at the University Art Gallery of Western Illinois University in 2023. These exhibitions highlighted his continued influence and adaptability across diverse venues and audiences..

Internationally, Paxton participated in a residency at AIR le Parc, Project and Research Center in Pampelonne, France. There, he deepened his interest in intuitive mark-making and atmospheric abstraction, engaging directly with the surrounding landscape and studio community to push the scale, density, and rhythm of his work. This residency allowed him to focus on process-based painting in an immersive environment, shaping new approaches that continue to influence his practice today. He also completed a residency at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, Wyoming—another formative experience that provided the time and space for concentrated experimentation in drawing and painting. These residencies have been integral to his development, offering expanded contexts and dialogues that inform the emotional and material intensity of his work. This experience furthered his open-ended and gestural approach to painting, allowing new material investigations to emerge in response to place and process..

His work is held in the collections of the 7th District Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the North American Coal Corporation, and numerous private and corporate collections across the United States. Additional institutional collections include works placed with the Illinois State Museum, Southern Illinois University, and the Beverly Arts Center in Chicago. His pieces are also represented in university-affiliated collections and regional museums with a focus on contemporary American and Appalachian-influenced art. These placements reflect the broad relevance and resonance of his work across academic, civic, and cultural institutions. He is the subject of the documentary Work at Hand (2018), which chronicles his studio practice and recovery from cancer. In addition to his studio work, Paxton has been an active educator at Columbia College Chicago, where he has taught and mentored young artists since 2005.

Charcoal Lungs #1, #2, #3 72" x 50" 2019

Michael K Paxton, Interpolate #9 96" x 72" 2021

His paintings—often executed on raw canvas or drafting film—bring together expressive mark-making and symbolic undertones in ways that evoke both personal and cultural memory. Anatomical suggestions, echoes of Appalachian mining landscapes, and shifting interior forms emerge within fields of energetic line and restrained color. These visual elements serve as metaphors for both bodily endurance and the sedimented layers of lived experience. His palette, rooted in flesh tones and earth hues, reinforces the physical and psychological weight of his subject matter—creating a visual language that is simultaneously grounded and transcendent.

The Matney Gallery continues to support and advocate for Paxton’s work through curated exhibitions, institutional partnerships, and strategic collector engagement. His evolving practice, informed by personal history, cultural context, and material exploration, continues to resonate with museum professionals and serious collectors alike. For those seeking a body of work that navigates identity, place, and endurance through painterly depth, Michael K. Paxton offers a singular and enduring voice in contemporary American art.

MIchael K. Paxton: Material Memory and the Appalachian Imagination

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