Michele Pierson

Michele Pierson (b. 1993, Philadelphia, PA) is an artist whose work illuminates the interdependent relationship between inner and outer space. Michele’s paintings of phantasmal landscapes, still life altars, interior spaces, and figures investigate the supernaturality of the human experience and its ability to be accessed through ritual, reflection, dreams, memory, and reverent observation. Driven by a deep curiosity to decolonize and personalize inherited thought frameworks such as religion, tradition, and cultural memory, Michele’s paintings seek to reframe these structures through an intimate, self-defined lens, offering the perspective that self-authored belief and individual interpretation can be both personally and collectively empowering and liberatory.

Michele earned her BA in Studio Art and Art History, magna cum laude, from Spelman College, with additional studies at the University of Ghana and Syracuse University in Florence, Italy. She has been awarded numerous fellowships and grants, including the Black Artist Fellowship (Mural Arts Philadelphia, 2024), Jar of Love Grant (ArtNoir x Sotheby’s, 2023), Forman Family Fellowship at The Alternative Art School (2023), Illuminate the Arts Grant (City of Philadelphia, 2021), and multiple residencies and fellowships with The Alternative Art School and Mural Arts Philadelphia. Her work has been exhibited in recent and upcoming exhibitions at Luster Gallery + Studio (Philadelphia, PA), Eckert Gallery (Millersville, PA), Abington Art Center (Jenkintown, PA), Ubuntu Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), Woman Made Gallery (Chicago, IL), and Miami Art Week.