Phone: 904.389.6712
Email: brad@theavondalegallery.com
About Mike Hoyt
Mike Hoyt has been called a “southern impressionist.” Taking a page from the French impressionists and American artists such as Edward Hopper and New England’s “Ashcan School,” Mike paints simple, everyday surroundings. “There’s something magic about an old barn or a shrimp boat or a broken-down tractor that captures the warmth of light and color native to the Southeast.”
Painting mundane objects, the land and its people are the essence of Mike’s work that he describes as “a trip to discover the beauty of ordinary stuff.”
The Florida native who now calls Raleigh, N.C., home began drawing and painting at an early age. He studied design as part of advertising studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and “poked around with art” for years before becoming a serious painter about fifteen years ago.
He has studied with several notable impressionists including Lois Griffel of the Cape Cod School of Art, at the Scottsdale Artists School under award-winning plein-air figurative artist, Peggi Kroll-Roberts, PPA founder Kevin MacPherson and Kenn Backhaus.
Much of Mike’s work focuses on rural North Carolina, “the small towns, the old barns, the abandoned filling stations, the fields and marshes that are so much a part of our part of the country.” But he also had been attracted by the rocky sea coast of New England, the desert Southwest, coastal South Carolina and Florida, the mountains of East Tennessee and the hidden lakes of North Georgia. His favorite painting spot, though, is Southern France. “Provence has a warmth and magnetism all its own. The light is magnificent, the natural hues of the rocks and villages are bright and vivid, and the wine ain’t too bad either,” he says.
In recent years, Mike has found himself in the role of teacher through art workshops in coastal North Carolina, the Tennessee mountains and Florida. He’s also gravitated toward portraits of pets and farm animals.
Is Hoyt trying to make a statement with his work? “Not really,” he says. “Like most artists I know, I like to paint subjects that make me happy, that make me smile. I get real excited when I can turn something some people may consider ordinary into an interesting piece of work. Now, that’s what turns me on about painting!”
Most weekends, especially when it’s warm, Mike can be found painting away "just about anyplace the sun is shining and people are friendly." And, in North Carolina, that ends up being almost anywhere. Mike’s work is collected throughout the U.S., from California to the Northeast and in Europe. His paintings hang in major banks, law firms, celebrities’ residences, restaurants and hotels. In addition to one-man exhibitions, he is presently represented by the John Silver Gallery in Manteo, NC, the Tyler-White Gallery in Greensboro, NC, The Mahler Gallery in Raleigh, NC, the Avondale Gallery in Jacksonville, FL, the Art Access Gallery, Columbus, OH, and the Eno Gallery in Hillsborough, NC.