Michael L. Atkinson, a Boulder artist and engineer has led a pretty colorful life. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee to a pair of Roller Derby stars who made their living traveling from town to town challenging opposing teams in over-the-rail fast action races. As a young child to a single mother, moving from place to place was routine. "With no siblings we were pretty mobile." He moved from the lights of New York City to the cool green of the South, finally resting, at high school age, in the bright sun of Phoenix, Arizona. He resumed his nomadic existence as a young man after high school and joined the rodeo circuit as a bull rider. By age 24, he had had his fill of bull riding. "The rodeo life was just too crazy, never knowing where to call home." So he entered a new social landscape by attending college. Upon graduation he found his first engineering job in Golden, Colorado. Since then Colorado has been the place to call home. "Colorado is a great place to live. I love the mountains, the thunderstorms."

It’s not surprising then, that his paintings reflect the life he’s lived, vibrating with color and light and depicting the majesty and subtleties of the western landscape.

Atkinson admits "I see the world as pretty colorful." Much of his skill in presenting a scene lies in his sensitivity to the color temperature. What interests him in a particular scene? "Usually it’s the light and how it defines things. Shadows are not deep dark things with no light in them, there’s lots of reflected light. Within the light there’s cool and warm and within the dark there’s cool and warm, and that tells you the essence of what’s going on. It’s dynamic. It creates a tension between the two areas."

Atkinson’s formal education is from Arizona State University where he received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. But he’s been involved with the arts ‘forever’. An early commission, at fourteen, was painting murals in the homes of friends. High school brought training in drawing, cartooning, commercial art and painting. In his rodeo days painting small town windows with cartoon rodeo scenes was how he earned money for "entry fees and an occasional beer." Later, while attending college, he designed sculpture in many forms, working with wood, glass and metal, which sold at local art shows and galleries.

In the early eighties he discovered a passion for painting. When he moved to Southern California for a three year stint in 1982, he studied with Larry Klepper, the director of the Cerritos College Art Museum. . Largely self-taught, he has attended workshops in the Colorado area. He began exhibiting his paintings in the west and has since won several awards.

He claims he was influenced by the teachings of Emile Gruppe’ and John F. Carlson, but viewing his work it’s clear his greatest influence is the quiet awe inspired by the scenes themselves

"What I want to give people is little pieces of the planet. This is where we live. To me the natural world is so full of color and light. In my landscapes you get my interpretation of nature, but millions of people can relate, it’s the real world. I focus on wilderness scenes, in particular those lttle vignettes of trees, water and rocks that make up a typical day in the wilderness."

While he is not averse to painting scenes of civilization, including figures, he is more concerned with capturing the vanishing wild places of the west. " I feel that people want respites from the hustle and bustle of modern life, and appreciate the quietness of nature that I try to convey in my painting"