Michelle Favin (b.1989) is a mixed Korean-American artist based in San Francisco. She makes atmospheric oil paintings as a practice of seeking wholeness. Growing up between two cultures in an age of fragmentation, she asks the question: how do we find belonging across time, lineage, and land?
Guided by Buddhist texts and the natural world, she begins each painting with the seed of a question. The deeper she goes into each work though, the more these questions abstract into an unanswerable field. The paintings become less about seeking answers, and more of a record of intimacy with the unknown and unknowable.
Through her process of intuitive, layered mark making, her work builds to moments of revelation, where the separation between time and being, questions and answers, the individual and the collective collapse, if even just briefly, on the surface.
image by Colleen Phan-Eversman
solo exhibitions
2024,Following the Footsteps, Glass Rice, San Francisco, CA
group exhibitions
2026, I’m So Happy You’re Here, Glass Rice, San Francisco, CA
2025, Never Left Unsaid, The Faight, San Francisco, CA
2025,The River Never Runs Dry, Glass Rice, San Francisco, CA
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
Overview of an interactive and collaborative art-making and storytelling event series about radical, inclusive, expansive and socially-conscious love. Arts in Education Action Collective. Cambridge, MA.
For inquiries, to say hello, email below or message here.
michelle@byfavin.com