Hello,
I'm Michael Barrett.
Recent work
Writing
At Substack, I write semi-regularly about current art projects, travel, and things.
Their mozzarella sticks are the best
January 13, 2023New painting from a portrait study, local landscape, stars, and birds.
A rainy day in LA County
January 7, 2023Alarms are set for 4 am. The poodle is safely snoozing at the in-laws. I pop out of bed and head to the shower. I never sleep soundly the night before a flight. I wake several times throughout the night in anticipation of the alarm. After a quick shower we throw the rest of our things into bags and head to the airport. It’s only a weekend so we treat ourselves to baller long-term parking right by the airport. No waiting for a shuttle this New Year’s.
French Toast
December 23, 2022This painting began as a digital portrait study based upon a Uniqlo advertisement I liked his serene expression and the direct, angled sunlight highlighting his jawline. I simplified his shirt - my cropping of the image makes the big aloha style shirt look more like an army surplus jacket. I simplified the t-shirt to flat yellow.
Two nights in Kiso Fukushima
December 19, 2022We’re getting pretty good at trains. At Kyoto station we locate our train quickly and realize we have some time to kill. We go find snacks for the train. Bottled green tea for her. I find a good looking ekiben with fried chicken and rice. We don’t want to stand around on the train platform so we look around the station for a place to buy something in exchange for some time in a chair. We see a Starbucks which we shun immediately. Starbucks is Starbucks, even in Japan. We start to walk away, but I spot the tell-tell sign of hanging lanterns down a little hallway next to the Starbucks. Train bar!
Four nights in Kyoto (continued)
November 27, 2022Part 2
Four nights in Kyoto
November 26, 2022Part 1 of 2
Two nights in Kanazawa
November 4, 2022Our bullet train quietly slid into Kanazawa. We collected ourselves and exited the train station beneath a giant metal and glass canopy fronted by an elaborate and beautiful gate. We found the taxi line. On the train I prepared my iPhone’s translation app with our hotel’s address. I showed this to the driver and said the name of the hotel, he read the address, and repeated the name of the hotel. We were there in 6 minutes. We dropped our backpacks and freshened up. I dropped 3lbs of Yen in coins from my pockets onto a table then immediately left to occupy ourselves. The jet lag followed us from Tokyo and was catching up fast.
Two nights in Tokyo
November 1, 2022We arrived at Narita airport and blearily made our way through immigration and customs. We were greeted outside of security by an associate of our travel agent. She whisked us outside to meet a driver who shuttled us silently from the airport to our hotel.
Thoughts on AI Art
November 1, 2022The robotic meat grinder for images is now available.
October snapshots
October 12, 2022And a brief aside about Instagram
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.