Michelle Rahbar is a visual artist based in Austin, Texas. Her intuitive painting process woven with collage creates a metaphysical visual vocabulary that’s deeply rooted in both her personal history and inspired by travel through West Texas and beyond. The loosely narrative nature of the paintings carries the viewer into her inner landscape. Her work centers on questions of identity, reality, rebirth and the beautiful transition of letting go of what no longer serves you.
She earned her BFA in Painting & Drawing from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and brought her dark, quirky midwest aesthetic to Austin. She has since exhibited across Texas in select curated and invitational exhibitions. Her paintings have appeared in national art publications and been acquired for both private and public art collections. She’s held positions as an arts writer, art educator, juror and is currently a contributing member of Bolm Arts Collective. In 2024 she mounted her first solo exhibition, “The World Doesn’t End”, and is currently co-curating an exhibition at Black Box Gallery in Austin, TX. Most days you can find her in her studio creating new work for her upcoming gallery shows in 2026.
Artist Bio
Both physical and mental transformation are at the core of my work. The way I
approach the canvas is delicate, deliberate and at times alternately ferocious. The
paintings are built using layers of brushed and scraped paint, and scavenged
materials cut and collaged into the painted surface.
According to scientists, our first two decades seem to pass as slowly as the rest of our lives, so that our early experiences carry vastly more psychic weight than those of adulthood. If this is true then all the landscapes, memories, and meteor showers I’ve witnessed have left their indelible mark on my work.
My recent body of work traces the paths of ghosts and ethereal figures through West Texas landscapes. The figures in the paintings are in a place of transformation, two headed beasts splitting and becoming both body and spirit, navigating landscapes I create that exist outside of linear time. They’re meditations on the world within and the push and pull of the universe without. Exploring how memories double the space
of your existence.
The work focuses on how loss reshapes you, how we reframe the idea of home throughout our lives and how past trauma can be cultivated into strength and beauty. Our identities shift throughout our lifetimes, but the ghost still lingers.