About the artist

Michalopoulos began his winding route to New Orleans by way of Washington, DC. While on the road, he began to sketch to fill the free time. A flirtation with art became an affair. Then a marriage. A strictly plein air painter, Michalopoulos was challenged to find a winter locale to continue his work. In 1979, he was drawn to New Orleans as the last bastion of hippie bohemian culture in America. The city and its “Culture of Celebration” held an intense appeal. He began sketching artists and musicians, houses and street corners.

Fascinated with the duality of beauty and decay, the architecture of the city became his muse. His portraits of shotgun houses and Creole cottages, depicted in layer upon layer of thick impasto paint, brimmed with color and energy and captured the essence of his subject. This body of work established him as the most influential living artist in the region today.Collaborative Artist Statement: Lisa DiStefano and George Marks

During this period of uncertainty in the world, we found ourselves returning to the things that offer comfort and grounding. Sometimes it was the people around us who provided strength and support. Sometimes it was the environments we inhabit, places that allow us to breathe, reflect, and reconnect with ourselves. And sometimes it was the quiet presence of animals. In this body of work, a gathering of dogs appears in our collaborative piece, offering something simple and powerful: unconditional love. Perhaps this is something we all need right now.

...clusters of trees gather and overlap, forming a kind of nest, an embracing space that offers protection and stillness. At the same time, these trees stand like sentinels, watchful presences that guard and witness.

...the human presence emerges through clothed and unclothed figures that carry both vulnerability and weight of memory and lineage. Some of these figures read as fatherly presences, inhabiting the space as quiet anchors, filling a void while offering a sense of guidance and steadiness.

Across our practices, vulnerability appears in different ways. Sometimes it is present in the honesty of the nude figure, sometimes in gesture and atmosphere, and sometimes in the surface itself, the delicate Belgian linen that absorbs mark, touch, and time. Throughout the work, there remains a tenderness that invites viewers to slow down and feel.

The work is intended to offer a moment of suspension, a space where one might briefly step outside the pressures of time and place. In that pause, the noise of politics and division recedes.