At the end of June 2025 I took a portrait painting workshop with none other than the extraordinary figure artist Tim Rees. To say I was nervous is an understatement. This was my first time attending a professional in-person workshop, it was with an artist that I have admired for years, and it was portrait drawing & painting from life, which I had not done since my college days! Talk about intimidating. It was an intense 4 day workshop working live from the model, and held at Studio Pintura in Minneapolis. The entire experience was incredible. Tim was an amazing instructor and so easy to talk to. He took the time to help each of us individually, and answer all of the questions we had. I learned so much and met some really great people. Certainly something I hope to do again!

   Some home remodeling has forced me out of my studio space for a bit, so I am spending the time working on this new website. When I started my art career under the name SummerBell Studio, I was painting mainly pet portraits, and enjoyed that as my main focus for several years. I thought the name was a cute combination of the names of my own pets, my dog, Summer and my cat, Bella. It worked for a long time... Fast forward to growth and change as an artist, and I have also completely fallen in love with painting still life. It felt like the right time to make a change across all of my platforms and just have everything cohesive with my name as my business name. I am still always available for pet commissions, because painting animals will be my first love no matter what. I am also grateful to have Summer and Bella still with me, as they are both into their senior years at ages 14 and 17 respectively. 

  Bear with me as I continue to add new things to my website that will hopefully make it easier to contact me, stay updated, and acquire work that you may be interested in. Looking forward to being back in the studio soon!

~ Michele

***Update to this blog post*** I felt like I needed to update to include that Summer and Bella have both crossed over the Rainbow Bridge since the time of this post.