Baker Artist Portfolios

Michael Stevenson is an artist based in Baltimore who works in painting, printmaking, music, and occasional performance. He’s driven by a mix of hands-on making, curiosity about history, and an interest in how people find meaning through looking. His work often comes from experimenting in the studio and following ideas across different materials and traditions.

He studied painting at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada, with additional time at UQAM (also in Montréal) and the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, Germany. During those years, he also co-founded the post-hardcore band Bliss, touring widely and releasing several recordings. The energy, collaboration, and improvisation from that period still shape how he works visually.

Stevenson later earned an MFA in Painting and Printmaking and an MA in Art History at Arizona State University. His research focused on early Mexican manuscript traditions and how stories were communicated visually without relying on written language. That work deepened his interest in how a narrative can be suggested through marks, symbols, and structure rather than direct illustration. He also spent several years teaching in Florence, Italy, where he became interested in how historical figures and motifs could be reimagined inside abstract compositions.

In the studio, he uses abstraction as a way to explore relationships, memory, and the sense of a story unfolding without specific characters or scenes. His paintings and prints often repeat or transform certain shapes, creating rhythms that viewers can follow in their own way. Instead of telling a literal story, the work offers an experience—something that shifts as you spend more time with it.

Stevenson received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, was a full fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, and an associate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, in Marin County, California. He founded the printmaking studio at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center in Los Angeles, which has now been active for more than fifteen years. He also ran Yuri-G, an independent gallery inside Maryland Art Place in downtown Baltimore. His work is held in both public and private collections across North America and Europe.