In Brock’s lovingly rendered landscape, a dusky valley is washed in rich evening jewel tones. Amethyst farm houses and barns rest in a rolling emerald meadow. Charmingly decrepit fence posts—long since missing their rails—lean haphazardly along a path that ambles across the span of the composition. The trees are energetically painted in quick impressionist strokes of branches and trunks. They also have a gem-like palette of peridot and tourmaline with a smattering of them starting to change to deep amber as the valley begins to take on autumnal hues. Rising up in the background, the mountain echoes the colors of the trees, fields, and structures below, and the whole scene has the richly-saturated feel of a dream or treasured memory.
A Utah native, Micheaux Brock spent her early childhood years in Holladay and Murray. Her family dreamed of living in the country, and decided to move to Coalville when Brock was in middle school. She and her 4 siblings loved growing up in Summit County, and it was while in middle school—in Mrs. Bate’s 8th grade art class—that she first fell in love with painting. She then took every class she could with Hannah Wilde throughout high school. In her current practice, Brock says she’s very driven by color. “I get inspired by things I love, like my kids, flowers, outdoors—colorful things all around me.” She likes to work in graphite, colored pencil, and acrylic, as well as her preferred medium, watercolor.
Brock says her 2015 Commission Award watercolor landscape was referenced from a photo she found in the back of a magazine. “I kept it because it reminded me of Coalville,” Brock says. “I was living in Kentucky at the time while my husband was in the military. I wanted to paint my own version of it because I wanted to move back to Coalville.” She and her husband did finally make it back to Coalville, where she now lives, creates art, and raises her family.
