Michele Suchland
Portland-based mixed media artist Michele Suchland creates sculptural and assemblage works that bring together unexpected materials, textures, and character-driven forms to create stories that feel both familiar and fantastical. Her artwork explores transformation, human connection, and the complexities of our psychological landscapes, often balancing humor and playfulness with a subtle sense of unease. After years as a representational painter, Michele embraced dimensional forms, allowing found objects and layered materials to become active elements in her storytelling. Each piece exists somewhere between reality and imagination, inviting viewers to discover curious characters, unexpected relationships, and deeper stories within the strange and whimsical worlds she creates.
About
Michele Suchland
She is a mixed-media artist whose practice has evolved from representational painting to sculpture and assemblage. Working primarily in series, she combines unexpected materials, found objects, textures, and character-driven forms to create narratives that explore human and animal behavior, societal and environmental concerns, and the complexities of our inner worlds. Her works balance humor and playfulness with moments of unease, creating spaces where reality and imagination overlap. Each piece becomes a small world of its own—layered with curious characters, relationships, and visual clues that invite viewers to look closer, connect, and reflect. Having grown up abroad and spent more than twenty-five years in Alaska, Michele now lives and works as a full-time artist in Portland, Oregon, where her diverse experiences continue to inform her ongoing exploration of materials, storytelling, and the human experience.
