About
Orange County, California fine artist Michelle S. Burt is an expressive impressionist, a poetic painter, and a visual storyteller whose art reconnects people to beauty, truth, and self.
Collected all across the globe and seen in Studio 7 Gallery, Kelsey Michales' Gallery, Mark Timothy Gallery, Nova Gallery, Mark Timothy Studios, Home Goods, World Market and the Sawdust Art Festival in Laguna Beach.
Michelle’s work is alive with movement, emotion, and light. She paints from the heart, capturing the rhapsody of each fleeting moment through color, texture, and intuitive expression. Each painting becomes a mirror, reflecting the unseen stories, desires, and truths that live within us. Her art transforms both the collector and the space it inhabits, enhancing environments with beauty that uplifts and energy that heals.
“I have always been an advocate for beauty, for others, for truth. As early as five years old, I was speaking up for my friends and family when they did not have the words or the strength to speak for themselves. That fire in me, part protector, part storyteller, never went out. It simply evolved.”
Michelle grew up at the beaches and in the mountains of Southern California surrounded by color, texture, and imagination. Both of her grandmothers were creative, and art quickly became her language of belonging. In high school, art class felt like home. She went on to study design and graduated from FIDM, The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, later earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Art from California State University, Long Beach with an emphasis in Interior Architecture. During her studies, she fell in love with oil painting, the buttery feel, the color, and the fluidity, and discovered her passion for the fine arts.
During college, she began collecting art she found at flea markets and garage sales, hanging the pieces salon style on her bedroom walls. At night she would lie in bed and study them. They became her sanctuary, her resting place. When life felt heavy, those canvases gave her breath and clarity. That experience planted a deep seed. She wanted to create art that could one day offer that same refuge for someone else.
After college, her dream of pursuing a master’s in fine art was cut short by family pressure, and she entered the corporate design world. Yet she kept painting, studying with local Southern California plein air award winners and falling in love with the energy of the Laguna Beach art community.
Then came motherhood and with it, a seismic shift. When her son was born and later diagnosed with autism, Michelle left the corporate world entirely. Advocacy became her full time role, for him, for his needs, for his future. At the same time, she returned to painting as a lifeline, but something was missing. Though others admired her work, she did not yet feel alive in it.
In 2012, after a divorce, Michelle moved to Laguna Beach with her son Caden to rebuild their lives and fulfill her lifelong dream of pursuing her art. She threw herself into weekly painting classes and one day painted a loose, vibrant lake reflection that changed everything. It felt free, joyful, and exhilarating. For the first time in years, she loved what she had made. That moment marked her return to herself and her readiness to share.
That painting led to her first art show, and from there her work evolved quickly from landscapes and seascapes to figurative and abstract forms. Her early dancer series captured women in quiet strength and grace, fluid and inspiring, like water in motion. By her third year, she began layering poetry into her work, first borrowed words, then her own.
“I had something to say. I just did not know how badly I needed to say it.”
When the Me Too movement began, Michelle felt a powerful call to use her voice to uplift women. She began pairing her mixed media paintings with handwritten poems, intimate, raw, empowering words layered into expressive figures. She did not want the viewer to simply read them, she wanted them to feel them.
And they did. Women began connecting with her work in profound ways. Some cried in front of a painting, thanking her for putting into color and words what they could not express. Her art became a resting place but also a rising place, a mirror, a moment of courage, a voice.
Today, Michelle creates florals, abstract reflections, seascapes, dancers, and an ever growing women’s empowerment series. She teaches, leads workshops, and speaks about creativity, healing, and expression. Every piece she makes is infused with her story and with yours.
Michelle welcomes commissioned work and loves collaborating with collectors to create meaningful pieces. Reach out to schedule a call and start the conversation about your personalized work of art.
www.MichelleSBurt.com
