Michelle Venable is a Maryland artist, gardener and photographer. She graduated from Hood College with a double major in Education and Studio Arts. She has worked as an artist for forty years exploring many different media from photography to ceramics, but her true passion is painting. She recently retired from her thirty year teaching career where she taught students from preschool through adults.Michelle has always been drawn to nature and enjoys painting and photographing the plants and creatures found in her garden. During the COVID shutdown, Michelle’s husband began beekeeping and Michelle became more aware of not only the impact that their bees had on their garden, but also how their gardening practices affected their bees. As they made their yard more pollinator friendly, she observed that they were seeing an increase in all sorts of pollinators and became fascinated with photographing and painting the pollinators visiting the plants in her yard.Michelle uses a batik process to create her pollinator inspired paintings. She applies the beeswax from her hives as a resist on paper created from natural fibers like rice and mulberry paper. Layers of wax and watercolor paint are used to create the batik style in her paintings. She is currently exploring making paints and inks from plants in her dye garden to create more environmentally friendly art and hopes to eventually be able to exclusively use homegrown paints and papers from her garden to make her art.
