BIO

Michelle Marianna Wicks is a Baltimore-based painter and founder of Tones & Tides Studio, where she creates coastal, nature-inspired work in watercolor and oils. After nearly twenty years away from painting, she returned to the studio with a renewed commitment to color, intuition, and the emotional language of water.

Michelle holds a B.A. in Studio Art from The Catholic University of America and has continued her study through Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Open Studies, including painterly oil painting coursework that expanded her use of texture, palette knife, underpainting, and observational practice. Her work is shaped by time spent along the coast and by a deep interest in how water, sunlight, and open space affect the body and spirit.

Through Tones & Tides Studio, Michelle paints scenes of coastal rest, buoyancy, marine life, and human connection to water. Her work becomes an invitation to notice life with more tenderness, curiosity, and hope. Her work often explores themes of belonging, renewal, joy, and the quiet courage of returning to oneself.

In 2026, Michelle exhibited as an Emerging Artist at Artscape in Baltimore, sharing original oils, watercolors, and limited-edition prints with a broad public audience. Her practice is rooted in accessibility and emotional resonance, creating work that invites viewers to pause, breathe, and feel held by color, light, and place.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work begins with water: its rhythm, its color, and its ability to hold movement and stillness at once. I paint coastal places, floating objects, summer skies, and quiet moments near the shore because they feel like emotional thresholds. They are places where the body softens, memory rises, and ordinary light becomes transformative.

For Sun Drunk, I selected works that explore the altered feeling of summer: the warmth before arrival, the glow of a sky at day’s edge, and the strange resilience of staying buoyant. In these pieces, sunlight is not only visual. It becomes atmosphere, mood, memory, and invitation. I am interested in the way summer can make time feel wider, how heat and color can blur the line between observation and feeling.

I work in both oil and watercolor, allowing each medium to carry a different kind of light. In oil, I build surface, texture, and form through layers of color and painterly marks. In watercolor, I follow the fluid movement of pigment and water, leaving room for softness, surprise, and transparency. Across both media, my process moves between intuition and observation.

After returning to painting following nearly twenty years away, I am especially drawn to images that speak to renewal. My paintings are about more than coastal scenery. They are about being restored by the natural world, being changed by light, and remembering what it feels like to be alive, open, and fully present.