Prints
Michelle Atkinson: back to Artist
Artist Statement
Silkscreen Prints
Clouds, Candy, Catastrophe
This body of silkscreen prints grew out of Michelle Atkinson’s summer research residency at AUArts, where she returned to a process she last practiced more than 20 years ago. Rekindling her love of silkscreen reconnected her with the precision and layering of her graphic design background, now redirected toward environmental narratives.
Each work begins with climate data from recent wildfires — translated into luminous, cloudlike forms that draw the viewer in with colour, texture, and sparkle. From the candy-coated whimsy of Bubblegum Sky to the stormy weight of Jasper and Evros, these pieces play with allure and denial, seduction and catastrophe.
By disguising environmental trauma in beauty, Atkinson asks us to consider how we too gloss over reality — hiding disaster behind filters, spectacle, and distraction, even as the world burns around us.
Artist Biography
Michelle Atkinson is an internationally awarded multidisciplinary artist who creates contemporary artwork based on the environment and humanity’s effect on it. Atkinson earned a graphic design diploma (NMPD’03 with honours) from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Canada with which she has garnered international acclaim and over 30 awards. She was published in Belle Armoire Jewelry magazine (’19) for her copper electroforming work. She is the only person to win the Made in Alberta Awards (Avenue magazine) three times in three categories over three years (’19, ’21, ’22). Recently she obtained grants from both the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (’22) and the Canadian Council for the Arts (’21) for a yearlong installation work at the Leighton Art Centre (’23). Atkinson also donates her time yearly to the Rotary Club of Heritage Park’s Second Chance Art Sale and reclaims broken picture frame glass as part of her practice. Atkinson’s first large-scale permanent public art piece was unveiled as the entrance to the newly designed Wild Canada section of the Calgary Zoo (’23). Her most recent art commission for the Calgary Stampede’s corporate art collection can be found in the newly renovated BMO Centre (’24).