Michael Straub

I work across paint, resin, digital space, and architectural form to explore how light, symbolism, and craft shape the way we experience beauty and memory.

My foundation is in classical oil painting, rooted in the techniques of the Italian Renaissance. I’m drawn to the discipline of it—the layered process, the storytelling, the reverence for proportion and gesture. But I also work with modern materials like dyed resin, creating luminous pieces that echo the spirit of stained glass, where light is not just reflected but transformed.

I build screens inspired by traditional Japanese folding screens, but I use them as a flexible canvas—sometimes for illustration, sometimes for Renaissance-inspired compositions, and often as light sculptures that shift depending on how they’re viewed. These pieces let me work between genres, across time periods, and within different states of illumination.

My mural work expands those ideas into space, making walls part of the story. And in parallel, my commercial and experimental work as a designer and programmer gives me another canvas entirely—digital tools, apps, and experiences built with the same focus on form, clarity, and emotional resonance.

Through all of it—whether I’m painting, casting, building, or coding—I’m exploring how structure and light can reveal what’s timeless, and what’s possible.