Michael Hegedus has spent a lifetime dabbling in the vast realm of art. He remembers markers, crayons and pencils being placed in his hands as soon as he was able to hold them. Constantly drawing cartoon characters, figures, animals, and landscapes, Michael poured out his imagination onto anything willing to hold an image. It was during these years, that much of Michael’s focus on the imagined and fantastical became embedded into his future art practices.

As Michael became older, his passion and yearning to produce unique art flourished. He began to desire the creation of more difficult images, focusing on form and volume, light and shadow, and the photographic rendering of various subject matter. However, representing an accurate form quickly became insufficient, as Michael merged his imagination and technical proficiency to create interesting compositions evoking both the strange and familiar.

Delving into the rich history of art, Michael soon became engulfed in the work of past masters, constantly drawing in inspiration from Dali, Bosch, Dore, Durer, Escher, Giger, Goya, and Schongauer to mention only a few. He specifically admired their creativity, as the artists seemed to produce works that were inimitable or “ahead of their time.” For him, it is within these artists’ work, that allowed for the idea of “art” to progress towards the many forms and movements we have today.

Today, Michael works with and combines a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, silk-screening, lithography, and intaglio. Since graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he has developed a fond attraction to the juxtaposition of the strange with the recognizable, a theme prevalent in many of his works.