Mike Cloud: Painting Outside the Safe Space

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Will Heinrich

An artwork in progress by Michael Cloud, in his studio in Chicago.Credit...Mike Cloud

As the lockdown stretches into another month, we’ve checked in on artists to ask how quarantining is affecting their studio practice. For some, the present emergency has spurred unlikely new ways of working. For others, it’s grinding work to a halt, whether for logistical reasons or just for emotional ones. Mike Cloud, an abstract painter with a Yale M.F.A. who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, falls somewhere in the middle. Mr. Cloud is known for applying bold colors to unusually shaped canvases, as well as for discreetly provocative gestures, like his “Hanging” paintings, a series of triangular constructions draped with small nooses. He spoke to me by FaceTime from the Chicago home he shares with his wife, the artist Nyeema Morgan, and their two children. [More]