Michael Garfield is on a mission to revive the broken lineage of world-embracing, avant-garde scientist-artists. He has a degree in evolutionary biology and works as a scientific illustrator for the National Biodiversity Research Center in Lawrence, KS. He has reanimated prehistoric beasts through art for the University of Kansas, Casper College, and the Petrified Forest National Park; worked on the production staff of the United States’ most renowned college radio station (KJHK, Lawrence); moonlighted as an internet music promotion consultant; and launched a DIY visionary music career, synthesizing percussive guitar and dense electronic exuberance.
Along the way, he became intensely fascinated with the maps we make of reality—how we explore vast interior terrain of the mind and manifest it through artistic expression. His illustrations are both contemplative cartographies—landmarks and legends of mystical experience—and field guides to the strange and beautiful life we encounter along the way. Bringing his biological sensibilities to the art, Michael’s images are each grown according to the rules of a unique visual genome—out of the rich ecology of the imagination, as an invitation to explore our infinite depths.
