Michelle Mansour is an artist, educator, curator, and the current Executive Director of Root Division, an arts & arts education non-profit in the Mission. Mansour received her MFA in Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute (2003). She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and received a BA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University (1995) and a Post Baccalaureate degree in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1998). Mansour has given lectures and been on panels with the San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, University of San Francisco, Oakland Art Gallery, & Berkeley Art Center. Her work as been shown in a variety of non-profit & commercial galleries including Southern Exposure, Swarm Gallery, blankspace Gallery, Julie Baker Fine Art, & Spur Projects. She is the recipient of an Honorary Fellowship from Djerassi Resident Artists Program (2005), and her most recent solo exhibitions were at the SFMOMA Artist Gallery in January 2009, and at Latham Square (via ProArts) in January 2010. She has curated and co-curated several exhibitions including 2x2’s at ProArts and Metaphysical Abstraction: Contemporary Approaches to Spiritual Content.

Based initially on an investigation of the interior world of the body where this wonder and fear, beauty and illness mingle in the same fluids and membranes, Mansour's work has more recently become a broader reflection of where science and the metaphysical overlap. The paintings are meticulously crafted by layering translucent washes of acrylic and building up relief surfaces with ink & silicone. Fluctuating between organic fluidity and manipulated surfaces, she uses this combination of techniques to speak about the tension between what we can and cannot control in our own physiology. While the subject matter suggests the seemingly inevitable possibility of illness and disease, the paintings serve as meditations on the exquisite and delicate balance of the natural world. The process of repeating layer upon layer, mark upon mark, becomes a devotional practice. Strands of cells appear as tissue-like prayer beads – a tactile element for counting countless meditations.