Character Study by Michael Knapp - Exhibit at Soft Water Gallery - WADA St. Pete

Exhibition Dates: July 2024 -August 3, 2024
Michael Knapp believes that there is beauty everywhere, if we just pay a bit more attention and put a little effort into looking for it. It’s probably safe to say that Knapp tends to look for beauty in rather unconventional places, but that makes his paintings that much more interesting.
Concerned that we let too much slip by unnoticed both as a society and as individuals, his goal is to bring some of these things to our attention, and to get us thinking a bit more. Even if the viewer reads in a completely different narrative than the one the artist envisioned, he counts it as a win, because the thinking and the engagement was the primary point of the artwork.
“It is true that a painting should be visually striking. Either beautiful or repulsive, a painting needs to gather the viewer’s attention first before it can deliver its message. And I feel that art in general, should have a message to impart or a story to tell. I paint to make a social or visual statement. I like to challenge the idea that art is just something pretty to look at. Why can’t it be pretty and also say something? Of course, it can.”