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Featured Artist
Michael White

Our Featured Artist is Michael White. Michael is an amazing artist, a teacher of art and, as it turns out, at no loss for words when writing either. Michael provided a “short” auto-bio for us. It’s a revealing and inspirational story of boy-meets-art, boy falls in love with art and lives happily ever after...

Michael White's Biography in his own words.

Well let’s see... I was born in 1964 in Campbell California, Michael James White. I was the son of a military man and a southern bell. I discovered art early drawing on and with anything I could get. Some of my first art work was done on the card board inserts from my mothers panty hose. By my second year I was already filling up sheets of paper with scribbles of cars and space ships. It was 1966 so what else was I suppose to draw? By age 6 if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I’d quickly answer “an artist”. The fact is I was already an artist and there was no stopping the creative river I had tapped into. I don’t remember but my relatives say I was easy to take care of if you just gave me a pencil. I don’t know if I was completely focused or if I was just bored. I was an only child and the first grand child so I got lots of attention but I was just one of those kids whose world was inside their head instead of outside.

So here’s how it went down, I got my start in California then started kindergarten in urban Coos Bay, Oregon with lots of kids all around. However, my parents separated and I somehow ended up on my Grand Fathers farm in York, South Carolina. I like to say I could have been a surfer but I ended up a red neck. Anyway, there were no other kids on the farm so I had to make up an invisible friend. I believe this is when my creativity really blossomed because I had to come up with ways to entertain myself. I did just that with my art and imagination. Therefore, I continued to draw and explore the farm and property. I especially enjoyed digging clay out of the creek and making indian style pots and such. I dried them on the porch. I was quite industrious. I remember lining up tiki heads and bowls in a long row on the porch to dry in the sun. I pretended I was an American Indian and even squeezed berries to make paint to decorate my creations. Ever nostalgic, I still have some of these.

Around age 8 my mother re-married and I got out of the country and into the ‘big city’ of Rock Hill South Carolina. That’s a punch line. Rock Hill is a mill town south of Charlotte, NC. I loved living near town because I was finally around a lot of kids again. This took some social adjustment. All of a sudden I had a step “bother” and a stepsister and 2 cousins across the street. I loved teaming up with other kids and torturing the adults but when I got into socially sticky situations with my brethren, I withdrew into my art. During this period I went through several art phases. There was the cute Disney character phase, animals of the world phase, hot rods, 70’s pop art, and I even took to drawing from the old masters paintings reprinted in my step father’s big illustrated family bible. (click here to read the rest)