Contemporary American artist Michael Godfrey is a representational landscape artist whose work hangs in many private and corporate collections. Born in Germany in l958 and raised in North Carolina, he earned a BFA in Fine Arts and began his painting career in oils and watercolors. He spends hours field sketching and photographing, preparing for a well thought out painting.

Typically, he starts a major work using small oil studies done on location. These field studies provide color accuracy and photographs provide special details. Godfrey composes his paintings from on site sketches in the field and photographic references. In studio, work progresses in successive layers of paint and light is orchestrated to create a painting that appeals to his internal sense of order.

A landscape artist has to have knowledge of many disciplines (geology, chemistry, physics, architecture), to understand the world in which they are trying to create. An artist must observe with the idea that what is observed must be interpreted and distilled. For a landscape artist, it is just as important what is not included in a work as what is eventually laid down.

“I ask myself, ‘what is the dominant truth – is it color, shape of land forms, or time of day.’\ I try to understand what I am seeing, so that the final work will capture the visual emotion.”

Michael Godfrey

Selected Solo Exhibitions
Booth Museum of Western Art 2008
Quest for the West Invitational 2007
Jackson Hole Art Auction 2007
Altermann Art Auction 2006
Sea to Shining Sea Invitational 2004
Peppertree Invitational 1995-2008
Arts for the Parks Top 100 - 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96
Gene Autry Museum - Annual Classic American Western Art Show 1995
CM Russell Auction 2005-2009
National Wildlife Museum Miniatures Show 1998-2008

Selected Group Exhibitions
2008               Booth Museum of Western Art, Cartersville, GA
2007-2014     Quest for the West Invitational, Indianapolis, IN
2004               Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE
2004               Sea to Shining Sea: A Reflection of America, Traveling exhibit presented by The Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA
2004               Big Sur Paint Out, Invitational Exhibition sponsored by Big Sur Land Trust, Big Sur, CA
1998 – 2010  National Wildlife Museum Miniatures Show, Jackson, WY
1995 – 2008  Peppertree Invitational, Santa Inez, CA
1996 – 98       National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, WY
1996                Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE
1995                 Annual Classic American Western Show, Gene Autry Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Selected Publications
Books: Art from the Parks - Rachel Rubin Wolf; From Sea to Shining Sea

Magazines:
Southwest Art Magazine Cover and feature article - December 2010
Art of the West, feature article May/June, 2010
Western Art Collector - February 2008, pgs 159,160,164, and 165
Western Art Collector - November 2007, pgs 170, 174
American Art Collector - April 2006, pgs 214, 215
American Artist - September 1998, Cover story

EDUCATION
1982          BFA, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC