To open space, hold feeling, and give form to the sensation of colour.
Michelle Hoogveld is a Canadian contemporary artist working across fine art painting and large-scale public art. Her practice is defined by a luminous, emotionally charged visual language rooted in geometric abstraction and abstract expressionism, in which hard-edged structure and gestural fluidity exist in sustained dialogue. Her densely layered canvases are intimate, considered works in which colour operates as the primary subject: building relationships, frequencies, and emotional depth through compositions that find a balance between precision and feeling. Whether painting an intimate canvas for a gallery wall, wrapping a sixteen storey hotel in colour, or sculpting steel for one of New York City’s most prominent lobbies, her work operates at every scale to reshape how people experience space.
Her public art commissions span North America, Europe, and beyond, with landmark works including ‘Heart: Portals of Connection’, two commissioned steel sculptures for Brookfield Place in New York City; ‘Dazzle My Heart’ at Le Germain Hotel in Montreal, at 16,758 square feet, one of the largest murals in Canada; ‘Technicolour’ in Hoboken, New Jersey at 13,500 square feet; and ‘Heart Court’, a private basketball court commission in Beverly Hills. Her work has been acquired by STRAAT Museum in Amsterdam and recognized with the City of Montreal Best Public Art Award, the TimeOut Montreal Best Public Art Award, and three Grand Prix du Design distinctions. Named one of Avenue Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2024, Hoogveld has been commissioned by an international roster of clients spanning luxury retail, real estate, hospitality, beauty, spirits, festivals, and civic institutions.
Hoogveld holds a Bachelor of Science in Visual Communications and Design from Lynn University and a Bachelor of Education in Art from the University of British Columbia. Born and raised in Calgary, Canada, her studio is in Montreal, where she works between commissions and exhibitions internationally.
Artist Statement
My practice is rooted in the emotional and spatial potential of colour. Through painting, I use abstraction to explore how form and colour can generate connection, atmosphere, and felt experience. I'm interested in the point where geometry meets gesture, where structure gives way to movement, and where a composition can hold both formal clarity and emotional depth.
Beginning with washes and pools of colour, these layers establish an atmospheric, emotional ground. From that fluid, intuitive field, I gradually construct a geometric framework, introducing hard edges and calculated divisions as a way to hold rhythm, tension, and balance. This exchange between spontaneity and precision is central to my practice. Organic gestures exist in constant dialogue with hard-edged geometry; movement partners with structure; fluidity meets form.
My densely layered paintings hold a multitude of distinct colours, returning repeatedly to forms such as the arch, linear fields, angular hearts, waves, and patterns within nature. These are recurring emotional and spatial propositions suggesting passage, relation, vulnerability, expansion, and return. They create compositions that move between architectural presence, and bodily sensation, between the built environment and the fluidity of landscape, memory, and emotion.
Colour operates as relationships, frequencies, energy, and atmosphere. My palettes draw from light, nature, shifting skies, textiles, fashion, and the layered textures of lived environments. This commitment to holding opposing energies simultaneously results in a visual language that's emotionally transparent, celebrating abstraction's capacity for joy, saturation, and aliveness. Each painting seeks to open space, hold feeling, and give form to the sensation of colour.