Hello,
I'm Michael Barrett.
Portfolio
Writing
At Substack, I write semi-regularly about current art projects, travel, and things.
Website refresh
August 1, 2022What is it you say you do here?
Measure once, cut twice
July 27, 2022The bumbling path to painting "Too early for breakfast".
Pool Poppies and Ring Daisy
July 8, 2022In June I finally completed two paintings which had been living on and under my desk for months. Both are further exploring painting atop digital paintings and photographs I’ve printed onto canvas. The struggles I faced trying to print and assemble the larger canvas ultimately led me to purchasing my big Epson SC-T2170
Marjorie, Erwin, and Laura.
July 5, 2022These are the names of the three Getaway cabins I’ve rented. Getaway has a campground outside of Glenwood, WA. The cabins are named after employee’s grandparents. Getaway rents tiny modernist cubes in the woods. Our Getaway is across the river from Hood River, OR, about an hour’s drive from the bridge.
Starts and fits
June 8, 2022A four-month blogging hiatus
Recent work
February 6, 2022A commission for a kitchen
A pre-existing condition
December 13, 2021The business model for digital art is not new and it’s not NFTs
Welcome to New York
October 18, 2021The coffee is not very good
Yellow beacon of glowing hope
September 13, 2021Covered and smothered
Booth life
August 16, 2021A day at the art walk
About
I grew up in Charlotte, NC. I attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. After a brief stint painting murals and working in galleries, I completed a Master of Fine Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. There, I began to experiment with web development, digital imaging, and large format printing.
After graduate school, I found my way into a software development career. I have worked primarily as a front-end engineer but I have also done full-stack web and service development in Java, C#, and Python. I have worked extensively with cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and has worked with container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes. Lately, I likes to say "JAMstack" in meetings to see if anyone notices.
I prefer VisualStudio Code as my JavaScript editor on macOS. I prefer Procreate on the iPad for painting. I prefer Sketch on macOS for creating web graphics. PixelmatorPro is pretty nice too.