Michael Zachary

MFA ’08 Fine Arts 2D

I make slow, hand-made cross hatch images.

Although the language of these images is “digital” (i.e modular, logical, and combinatoric), I am most interested in is what happens when that digital syntax collides with the ā€œresolution limitationsā€ that inevitably result from creating a cumbersome physical object imperfectly by hand. I am constantly trying (and failing) to turn my body and mind into the worldā€™s slowest, least efficient digital image processor because the result is not a photograph but a distorted fun-house mirror that reflects our own relationship with technology and with the natural world back at us. ā€œIt is in vain to dream of a wild distance from ourselves. There is none such.ā€ Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal. ā€œIt is in the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess of Concord, i.e. than I import into it.ā€ I hope my work will slow you down and draw you into that primitive bog. There are things to be found there we should wrestle with.



Michael Zachary is an artist and a professor of painting and drawing. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. His work has been supported by a Residency Fellowship from the Josef and Anne Albers Foundation, a Finalistā€™s Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Councilā€™s Fellowship Program, an individual artist grant from the Berkshire Taconic Foundationā€™s Artistā€™s Resource Trust, and a Blanche Coleman Award from Boston University.

Zachary_Headshot