Biography

Michael Torlen is a painter, Associate Professor of Visual Art and a founding member of the faculty in the School of Art+Design at Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, New York where he teaches painting and drawing. He earned his BFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art and his MFA at Ohio State University. He is currently writing a book on perception and studio practice.

Mr. Torlen was born in San Diego, California into a Norwegian commercial fishing family. His series, Songs for My Father, is a body of over 1,000 landscape works inspired by his interest in the Maine coast, the sea, National Parks and the northern romantic tradition. His most recent work, Sanger Fra Mor (Songs From Mother) is an ongoing visual essay using commercial fishing, oral history and autobiographic images to explore identity, maritime history and the persistence of memory. He draws upon his experiences both as a young boy aboard ship with his father and as a crewmember on a commercial tuna purse seine vessel. Further inspiration for his work is gained from trips to Monhegan Island, Maine where he paints in the open air and researches the historical maritime resources of the Monhegan Museum.

Mr. Torlen has been an artist-in-residence at Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine and at Weir Farm, Wilton, Connecticut where he is featured in the Visitors Center's informational videotape. His work is in the collection of the Neuberger Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, Housatonic Museum of Art , Springfield Art Museum, and in many corporate collections including IBM, Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P.Morgan & Co., and Deloitte & Touche. He is a member of Watercolor USA Honor Society. He exhibits his work at Miranda Fine Arts, Port Chester, NY, and Madelyn Jordon Fine Art, Scarsdale, NY, and in Maine at Caldbeck Gallery, Rockland, and Whitney Art Works, Portland, and on Monhegan Island at Lupine Gallery.