About Michelle Hinebrook

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Michelle Hinebrook is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary visual artist, educator, and curator. Her practice brings together creative production, material research, critical inquiry, and contemplative practices, exploring the intersections of art, design, and technology.

She received her MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art and her BFA in Art & Design, with honors, from the College for Creative Studies.

Hinebrook’s professional practice includes curating, exhibition development, arts education, institutional programming, and collaborations with art consultants, advisors, designers, galleries, collectors, and organizations. Her work has been exhibited, commissioned, collected, published, and reviewed internationally and is represented in institutional, corporate, hospitality, and private collections. She is currently seeking exhibitions, commissions, teaching opportunities, and collaborations with galleries, collectors, institutions, and organizations across art, design, technology, and education.

Hinebrook has completed projects and commissions for institutional, corporate, hospitality, and private collections, including the Pew Foundation, Daimler Art Corporate Collection, Edelman Corporate Collection, Ritz-Carlton Dubai, Raffles Branded Residences in Istanbul, Embassy Suites Minneapolis, Union Square South in New York, Universal City Hilton in California, Houston Royal Sonesta, Renaissance Hotels, Hyatt, Hilton, Baker Tilly, and Hotel Baronette.

Her work has been placed through art consultants, advisors, designers, and art organizations including DAC Art Consultants, Pfizer Corporation, Canvas Art Consultants, Eaton Fine Art, Michael Foley, Soho Myriad Art Consultants, 20x200, Inson Wood, Jen Bekman.

Her exhibitions include David Klein Gallery, Maryland Center for the Arts, Foley Gallery, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Brooklyn Contemporary, Blacklist Gallery, Hallway Gallery, LTS Gallery, Edelman Gallery, 101 Exhibit Gallery, Hewitt Gallery of Art, Pratt Institute, Islip Art Museum, McKenzie Fine Art Gallery, Museum of New Art, One Line Gallery, Civilian Art Projects, Nancy Margolis Gallery, WSE Gallery at NYU, and Lemberg Gallery. Her work is represented in institutional, corporate, and private collections, including the Pew Foundation for the Arts, Museum of Arts and Design, Pfizer Corporation, Detroit Institute of Arts, Cranbrook Art Museum, numerous private collections.

Hinebrook’s thirty-year career in arts education and professional practice includes visiting artist, critic, educator, and curatorial work with Pratt Institute, the College for Creative Studies, Bowling Green State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Western Carolina University, the College Art Association, and Artisan, LLC.

Her teaching experience includes the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Pratt Institute, Young Audiences New York, Marquis Studios, Cranbrook Academy of Art, the College for Creative Studies, the University of Michigan, Bowling Green State University, UrbanGlass, Snowfarm, Artists Space, Parsons School of Design, Western Carolina University, NurtureArt, New England Crafts, Studio in a School, PS 20, and Berkeley Carroll School.

Hinebrook is Director of The Brooklyn Contemporary Artist Space and Artful Edge Academy in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Her experience includes exhibition planning and design, curatorial practice, gallery direction, installation, exhibition programming, and arts event planning and promotion. Her curatorial work includes exhibitions and programming for the Pratt Manhattan Graduate Communication Design Gallery, Brooklyn Contemporary Artist Space, the College for Creative Studies, and Girlee Detroit Contemporary.

My work explores how attention shapes our perception of reality and the interconnections between body, mind, nature, and cosmos. I am curious about what our patterns of attention reveal about us as individuals, and what aspects of reality we may miss, overlook, or leave unseen. I explore these ideas through painting by noticing what exists beyond and beneath the visible world and translating my internal experiences, thoughts, and sensations into material form. I am interested in painting the metaphysical aspects of perception and consciousness, exploring how internal experience can become visual form. I see the canvas as a space where different ways of seeing and knowing can exist simultaneously. It is where inner and outer experiences converge, observation meets intuition, representation reveals the abstract, personal consciousness connects with the collective, and the visible world opens onto the invisible mysteries of life.

As a neurodivergent artist, my perception of the world is shaped by synesthetic, sensory, and somatic experiences. The layered imagery and interconnected forms in my paintings reflect the many ways I experience and construct the work, using technology to expand perception, tuning into intuitive information and the somatic and energetic sensations of the body, drawing from symbolic forms within the subconscious, incorporating fragments of memories and dreams, and allowing emotion to be expressed through color and gesture. These interconnected ways of seeing and knowing allow me to visualize the psychological landscape of the human psyche. I am interested in painting the internal nature of human experience through bodily sensations and internal imagery, accessing different states of consciousness, exploring our connection to the sentience of nature, and visualizing invisible forces such as energy, sound, vibration, and the auric-subtle body. Through this process, I bring together the visible and invisible, the psychological and energetic, and the personal and universal as I explore the unseen and mysterious dimensions of human experience.

A near-death experience in 2020 deepened my inquiry into consciousness, the energetic body, the afterlife, and our interconnectedness with nature. I now approach painting as a spiritual practice, using it to collaborate with the numinous source of creativity and ideas, to understand the universe, and to visualize the metaphysical and spiritual dimensions of life. Art is a threshold between embodied and spiritual worlds, where sensory and emotional experiences converge. My paintings move between representation and abstraction, integrating the figure, natural patterns, and biological, botanical, cosmic, geological, and symbolic forms, drawing connections between the structures of nature and the body. I draw inspiration from mythology, dreams, imagination, and diverse spiritual traditions. Mythological figures surface throughout my work, embodying the power of nature as feminine deities. Figures dissolve into landscapes, flowers become cells, and bodies expand into fields of energy, where the body and the cosmos mirror one another. These shifting forms fuse, fragment, and evolve into new forms, reflecting the fluid nature of thought.

Art is fundamental to human experience, and my paintings remain open to the experience of the viewer. The paintings invite curiosity, interpretation, and contemplation, offering a meditative space where viewers can bring their own memories, sensations, and emotions into the work, allowing personal associations to be filtered, synthesized, and transformed into new meanings.

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