About
After more than four decades of teaching, conducting research and writing about women’s history and women’s and gender studies, I have returned to my first love: making art. It is both humbling and exhilarating to embark on a new career at this stage. I am experimenting with multiple media and materials. My larger works are primarily acrylic on canvas but many include elements of collage. I also make smaller pieces that are primarily collage and assemblage. (My studio is filled with bins of materials—what my husband and kids call “junk”—waiting to be turned into art.)
​
As a longtime feminist, I might be expected to produce work “with a message,” but in fact very few of my pieces turn out to be overtly political. If anything, I am rather retro, making paintings when many younger artists are focusing on installations, performance pieces, videos, and the like. Moreover, I eagerly embrace the mantle of abstract expressionism, a genre that has been largely superseded but one that I believe has by no means been exhausted, and which I am proud to carry on.
​
From June 2018 through March 2023, I was a member of Touchstone Gallery in Washington, D.C. I exhibited in monthly group shows and in April, 2022 I had a solo exhibition there, “Seeing My Way.” Here is a video tour: https://fb.watch/cTGciIakXf/. I have also exhibited at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Gallery and at several venues in the Maryland-Washington, DC. area, including Circle Gallery in Annapolis. I am currently a member of Women's Caucus for Art-DC and Maryland Federation of Art.
Press
"Seeing My Way By Sonya Michel" by Hannah Docter-Loeb
Washington City Paper, February 2022
​
"Sonya Michel Collaborates on Exhibition of Ukrainian Women Artists"
University of Maryland, Department of History, January 2023
​
"A Maryland Artist Turned Jamie Raskin's Bandannas Into A Collage" by Katie Kenny
The Washingtonian, May 2023
​
"In The Galleries: The Medium of Paper Carries Multiple Messages"
The Washington Post, July 2024
​