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Mikey Coleman, a Chicago-based artist, was born in 1995 and raised on the city’s West Side. In 2013, he graduated from The Chicago High School of the Arts with a primary focus on painting and drawing. His recent work delves into the dystopian landscape of childhood shaped by American media, illuminating its profound impact on his generation’s worldview.
Hi Mikey! Thank you for sitting down with me. First question that I always ask. How does a regular day look like for you in Chicago?
A regular day for me starts around 10 am with a cup of black coffee. I try to wake up earlier but most nights I don’t go to bed until 3 or 4am. I work part time at a museum (about 4-5 days out of the week) so my schedule is structured around the days I work. I pack snacks and lunch for the day to avoid eating out or spending money on fast food.
I’ve been taking the train/bus to work to save money on gas and other car related expenses. I also get to catch up on reading when I take the train/bus. After work I take the bus to the studio which is about a mile away from the museum. I have a couple of ongoing projects that I’m currently chipping away at.
It’s the playoffs so it’s fun watching high intensity games with my studio mate while taking small breaks from painting. I leave the studio around midnight, sometimes later depending on what I’m working on, or if my friends come by to give me company. I get home and begin to decompress. I eat something, then either read, draw or end the day watching random videos on YouTube in bed.
Alright, so growing up in Chicago, what kind of kid were you, what did you enjoy doing and how did you spend your time?
I was a very active kid. I loved to hang out with my friends and play basketball, swim, dance, flip on mattresses. I was also very creative at a young age. Just like most kids I was obsessed with toys, especially action figures. Surprisingly, even though I wasn’t that big on watching TV (I had a very short attention span), I was so heavily influenced by the media, and always trying to mimic someone or something.
I’ve been following Chicago drill culture for a while now, so I wanna ask you. Seeing that Chicago is home to a lot of gangs and a lot of gun violence. Growing up, was that something you experienced? And what kind of kid were you growing up?
I would actually consider my experience growing up on the west side as a normal childhood. It’s a rough part of the city, that’s no secret to anyone, but there’s so many more sides to my neighborhood that aren’t always highlighted. Violence was around, sometimes you can’t avoid it, but regardless I was a playful kid, me and my friends had fun.
With that in mind, Chicago has a rich history when it comes to hip hop. Artists like Twista, Kanye West, Chief Keef, Lil Durk, Fredo Santana, and the list goes on… All that culture, has that influenced you in any way?
Seeing Artists like those mentioned still influences me to this day. I know that Chicago is technically a big city but it feels very small in a lot of ways. It sometimes seems crazy to believe someone regular who grew up just like me and my friends in this city went on to achieve such great things. Someone who rode these same buses/trains, played basketball at these same parks, and grew on these same blocks. It encouraged me to believe that maybe anything was possible. It also reassured me of the influence everyday Chicagoans have around the entire world.
Ok Mikey, let’s talk about your work now. When did you start to paint, and when did you start taking being an artist seriously?
I started painting in high school. I went to an arts school and as students we were required to experiment with different mediums. Before my junior year, the medium I was most comfortable using was pencil, but I ended up developing a connection with oil painting near the end of my senior year.
Once I graduated, painting was my go-to medium, [and I dove head first into bigger and bigger paintings]. From that point it would take 2-3 years before I began to visualize my career as an artist in a realistic way. I knew I was talented, and creating felt like the most natural thing to me, I just never knew what being a studio artist actually meant. At the time I struggled to believe someone could actually make a living by creating.
The various dreamlike, surreal scenes and protagonists in your work. How do you come up with them? And what’s the inspiration behind them?
I’ve always been a story teller to some degree. When I was younger, one of the reasons I would enjoy playing with toys so much was because of my ability to storytell. I felt so much freedom in controlling my own narrative, or reimagining an already existing story. I would later take this same approach with my paintings. For example “The Tale of the Pied Piper” starring controversial R&B singer R Kelly and Big Bird from Sesame Street.
In this painting I depicted the castration of the singer as a direct response to the “Surviving R Kelly” documentary that took the country by storm. Painting such grotesque imagery was my way of expressing outrage. I don’t believe it’s so simple choosing a protagonist or antagonist while narrating stories through paintings, but in the case of “The Tale of the Pied Piper” it was pretty cut and dry, very literal. I tend to think that reality is rarely that straightforward though, and every story is complex. Depending on who’s watching, the protagonist may differ, and I don’t want to make it that easy for the viewer to choose moving forward.
In one of your previous interviews I read that your current body of work is influenced by the pop-art-era, starting in the 50s. What is it about that era that resonates with you?
Artists from the pop-art era were critiquing the world around them through drawings and paintings, and I realize that I use a similar thought process when approaching my work. Even in my earlier paintings, my compositions were all centered around sub genres in pop culture. To me, pop culture is a direct mirror that reflects our current state in society. I’m interested in the characters that represent nostalgia, and are symbolic to key moments in history both during and before my time.
What interests me about that era is that it feels like the beginning of modern culture. The world was changing at lightning speed after World War II, and America was undergoing a second wave of mass consumption. Commercials and Advertisements were popping up everywhere in a way it had never before, and really signified and created a culture shift. Growing up in the early 2000s when advertising was a part of everyday life, I can hardly imagine what that world was like, and it’s fascinating for me to think about where that all began.
Would you consider yourself a nostalgic person?
Yes. I’m very nostalgic. My entire current body of work revolves around archived images. I learn so much from revisiting the past. I love the feeling I get from hearing olds song that reminds me of certain moments in my life. Part of the reason I select some of the vintage characters in my works is because I want to evoke that sense of nostalgia into the viewer.
How do you think painting deals with being well received on social media compared to being something people want to own and hang on the walls in their homes?
Social Media allows people to view, like and share a painting without even leaving their homes. It’s a tool that connects people from around the entire world, thus making fine art more accessible to everyone. I believe it’s important to have people engage with your work online, it also feels great to receive good feedback. With that being said the main goal for me atleast is to have work in actual galleries/Museums. Have works in actual collections and homes. Best case scenario I would like to have the best of both worlds.
Can you also tell me about your use of symbolism?
I’m very particular with my usage of symbolism, I like it subtle. I think symbolisms should act as puzzle pieces to the overall vision of a piece. One of my earliest pieces from 2017, “No Heart” is a good example. In the far right corner of the piece I painted actor Clifton Powell holding a cassette tape in his hand. If you’ve seen the movie “Menace II Society” then you probably guessed the reference. In the movie, Clifton gave a cassette tape recording of a homicide to the authorities, which had been given to him by his friend and was an act of betrayal on Clifton’s part, but was a wild turn of events near the end of the film.
How do you deal with creative blocks?
I just stop. Take a break, do something physical or go on a mini adventure. Anything besides trying to push through the mental fatigue. Breaks are important for me because they allow me to reset. I come back with a better outlook and more inspiration, just looser. I’m always dealing with creative blocks, and there honestly isn’t just one answer to solve this problem, because it comes with the territory.
Can you describe your studio practice for me? And are there any necessities you have to have with you or present in the studio
My process begins with reference images and or found objects. These items can be of anything, it doesn’t need to be specific, but I’m usually drawn to material that is nostalgic, and I am always just coming up on things that will strike me or trigger an idea or sense of possibility.
For example, just the other day I found some toys from a gallery in Chinatown that I decided to buy. I ended up buying this Astro Boy toy, a modernized Godzilla figurine, and these jumbo-sized army men. I don’t have a specific plan on how I want to compose them into a painting, but I’m going to start with sketches to get an idea
of what materials I plan to use, and how I want to manage color, and space. The drawings are like a warm up, they start a domino effect, and then the ideas just piggyback off of one another.
The next phase of my process is prepping for the paintings. I stretch, gesso, and build each of my own canvases from scratch. I develop more of a connection to my work by doing it this way. When I finally start painting, I like to be working on multiple pieces at once.
While painting I need snacks in the studio at all times. If you’re working for hours it’s best you have something to snack on so that you don’t have to stop painting and leave for food. I also need some sort of cigarettes in the studio. They’re bad for you, and can be extremely addictive, but sometimes it’s good to take a quick break from painting
and smoke one. It can be meditative to some degree, at least for me. I also need to keep a speaker for music in the studio at all times.
Alright Mikey. I always ask these two questions at the end of an interview. The first is. What’s your favorite movie(s) and why?
One of my favorite movies is “Pulp Fiction”. The dialogue between Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta is hilarious. Their conversations are so simple, but they say alot about each character’s personality, they have great chemistry and it feels natural. I love classic gangster movies too. Movies like “Menace II Society”, “American Gangster” and “Paid In Full”. I also love a good psychological thriller like “Fight Club”.
The second is. What song(s) are you currently listening to the most right now?
Future Hendrix, Thugger, Oldies. A good friend of mine came by the studio and put me on to Pink Floyd!