Multimedia artist Michael C. Thorpe executes quilts in a painterly manner, using sculptural elements with the stitches of traditional quilt-making to create compositions based on different narratives of his community. Inspired by his career as a collegiate basketball player, his family, and contemporary culture, he executes "painting quilts" that are provocative, witty, and synchronous with our times. Inspired by the White quilting lineages of the women of his family who are master quilters in New England, his subsequent discovery of the Gee's Bend quilters offered him deeper personal meaning in his chosen medium and a connection to his African American heritage.
Thorpe's figures and compositions draw inspiration from Romare Bearden's experimental collages and Jacob Lawrence's abstract depictions of Black life. The narrative element of his work draws parallels to the work of Henri Matisse and David Hockney. Inspired by Martin Kippenberger, Thorpe feels akin to his productive output spanning mediums.
Michael C. Thorpe was raised in Newton, MA, and earned his BA from Emerson College in Boston, MA, where he studied photojournalism. He was included in Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art, an exhibition organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, that opened in October 2022, and later traveled to the Frist Art Museum in Nashville. Thorpe's work was also included in Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, organized and first presented at the MFA Boston in 2021 and then at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA, through March 2023. Recently, Thorpe's work was included in Birds in Art, organized by Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, WI. In 2024, he had solo exhibitions at four museums in four states - California Heritage Museum, Santa Monica, California, Practice Makes Perfect, The Delaware Contemporary, Wilmington, Delaware, Homeowner's Insurance, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts, and No Expectations, Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, North Carolina. Open in 2025 Quilts, his most recent exhibition is on view at the California Heritage Museum, Santa Monica. Works by Michael C. Thorpe have been added to the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and numerous private collections around the country.
