Michelle Favin (b. 1989) is a mixed-race Korean American painter currently working in San Francisco, CA.

She is interested in paintings as objects of contemplation. Through a process of intuitive washes inspired by Korean ink wash and responsive oil layers inspired by the California Light and Space movement, she builds a record of the space between meditative states of stillness and embodied states of action.

As a third-culture, mixed Korean American, she is drawn to what emerges along the spectrum of duality and what is produced when seemingly oppositional forces interact. How can the edges and boundaries of a canvas contain both stillness and action, lightness and darkness, the East and the West? What can oil, water, and pigment capture in the pause between stimulus and response?

Before pursuing her painting practice, Favin received a M.Ed from Harvard University in Arts and Education, and B.A. from New York University in Sociology and Public Policy.

image by Colleen Phan-Eversman

solo exhibitions

2024, Following the Footsteps, Glass Rice, San Francisco, CA

group exhibitions

2024, residency group 43, PADA studios, Barriero, Portugal
2023, Pyramid Scheme, Bass & Reiner, San Francisco, CA
2022, Animus, Arcana Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2022, Small Works, Soft Times Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017, love in the time of, Gutman Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2017, herCreative, Gutman Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2016, exist, American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, MA

education and residencies

2024, Residency Group 43, PADA studios, Barriero, Portugal
2017, Artist-in-Residence, Project Zero, Harvard University
2017, M.Ed., Arts in Education, Harvard University
2011, B.A., Sociology of Race and Education, New York University


publications

i wrote this to heal by Alysha English, Elizabeth Co., 2021
Designed layout and book cover.

—of Earth, 10th Floor Studio, 2020
Contributed artwork from “beautiful time” series

of Juliet, Juliet Mediaverse, 2019
Contributed custom artwork and illustrations

 

Overview of an interactive and collaborative art-making and storytelling event series about radical, inclusive, expansive and socially-conscious love. Spring 2017 with the Arts in Education Action Collective. Cambridge, MA.

For inquiries, to say hello, email below or message here.

michelle@byfavin.com