Michael J. Reibel
My Story

In January 2005, at the age of 40, I picked up a brush for the first time in 24 years. While attending St. Xavier High School in Louisville, Ky., I took numerous art electives as a sophomore and continued through my senior year.  These elective classes exposed me to a variety of mediums and gave me the opportunity to paint or draw every week.  I displayed a natural talent for drawing and painting and performed well in scholastic competitions.  In grade school, I recall a tempera painting of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon (complete with the American flag and lunar module!) that was entered in a childrens' theatre art competition and won a ribbon. The painting was featured in the Louisville Courier Journal along with other entries.  My earliest recollection of art was a summer camp that my Mom enrolled me in at the J.B. Speed Art museum in Louisville at the age of five.

Upon entering college at what is now Bellarmine University, I did not pursue my artistic passion and abilities with a degree in fine arts, instead initially pursuing a degree in medicine only to change to accounting while I played on the basketball team.

In the summer of 1987, while attending Bellarmine College, I was awarded a language scholarship to the University of Madrid, Spain and spent the summer touring Europe with two friends eventually departing for Madrid where I attended classes at the university, lived with a Spanish family and toured the country.  Looking back on the experience, while I was not painting or drawing at the time, it exposed me to world class art museums, picturesque landscapes of all types, formal gardens and world class architecture.

I have often wondered if not pursuing a fine arts degree in college was a mistake.  I occassionally have regrets, but I also wonder whether pursuing this talent later in life gives me an opportunity to create art that I could not have created as an 18 year-old.  Were the experiences and opportunities since then required and necessary to influence my choice of subject matter today?  Does my maturity level today enable me to communicate the feelings and mood one has when looking at the morning mist, the setting sun, the barn in the distance or the dramatic colors of the landscape better today than I could have years ago?  I can only hope that this was somehow meant to happen this way and I am terribly grateful to have rediscovered this talent at the age of forty.

Many thanks to Betty Layman, an artist in Shelby County, Ky., who saw my work from high school purely by chance and spurred my decision to pursue my artistic gift.

To the buyers of my work to date, thank you for your support and interest. I have very lofty ambitions and goals for the future of my work!