As an art student at UNC, Michael Brown experimented with “big, big stuff – very abstract” projects that took up whole buildings. Meanwhile, he painted houses to earn money. “I knew how to move paint – lots of it – and I knew how to get up high,” he says about developing the skills “to do big.” He completed his first mural (a blue night scene of a church steeple) for Chapel Hill in 1989, many years after he had a dream about painting “a big purple stripe that glowed in the dark” on the backside of Franklin Street. “Big meant getting attention. I didn’t crave attention but I certainly wanted to be an artist. I had this understanding that attention and survival sort of go together.”
Currently, Michael is working in his studio on a mural for the town of Blowing Rock that will be installed in large panels. “Today I am painting Tweetsie Railroad; yesterday I painted rhododendron…” Another recent project is a canvas orange VW with a rainbow on the side made for Hillsborough’s Handmade Parade. Michael appreciates when art takes some risk and incorporates some imagination. As such, he coached the folks ‘driving’ the bus to “make the thing dance; don’t just plod down the road.”
