Micki Colbeck is a musician and naturalist as well as an artist. Her lifelong interest in science and nature is always present in her paintings. When looking at her landscapes one can sense the geology of a place and the changes it has undergone through man’s interaction with it. A common theme is the balance between the wild and cultivated, those little pockets of humanity surrounded by forests.
At Webster College in the early 70s she studied with Phil Sultz, who in those days created huge abstract expressionist paintings. Ever the figurative painter, she absorbed a lot from him about color, brushstroke, and the organic experience of painting. It is after all just paint, one’s interpretation of the life around.
Micki earned her graduate and undergraduate degrees in studio art and art education from Webster College, in St. Louis. For twenty years, while raising her two children, she taught art in the public schools of Missouri. In 1996 she moved to Strafford. Her life in Vermont has been rich and varied. After a few years as a farm-hand, she became the Community liaison for the Full Moon Cafe until its closing in 2003. Building a studio in 2004, she began painting daily, and exhibiting throughout the Upper Valley and beyond. She is a member of Strafford Artworks, Vermont Arts Council, and a co-curator at Open Museum. Her paintings can be found at Long River Studios in Lyme, NH and at her studio in Strafford.

Upcoming solo exhibits:
Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH, June and July 2010
Lebanon Coop Café Gallery November-December, 2110
Howe Library, Hanover, NH, August 2011