Originally from remote upstate New York near the Canadian border, Michael Breyette couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t draw or paint. When he was a teenager he satisfied his fascination with the male physique by painting muscular heroes in fantasy or sci-fi settings, but attempted to avoid too many questions about his sexuality by often including a buxom female character as well. He never expected his pastime of drawing and painting would become a career – born and bred in a conservative and rural area, being openly gay didn’t even seem a possibility, let alone having an artistic career that indulged in homoerotica. It wasn’t until moving away many years later that Michael was able to open up and be the man and the artist that he became.  
 
A self-taught artist, his work blossomed and evolved as he began expressing his true self on his drawing board as well as in his life. His infatuation for the male form took his art in a more self-expressive direction. He transitioned from oils to soft pastels, and thus began his journey of creating beautiful masculine paintings primarily using his fingers. Towards the end of his life Michael moved back to a rural setting in the mountains of Vermont to live and to continue dreaming up his warm scenes of hope, joy and lust, inhabited by an enchanting array of men he created with what he called the ‘colourful dust’ of his pastels.

Two collections of Michael’s work have been published – Summer Moved On (2007) and Seasons of Love (2011). He spent many years exhibiting at the Lyman-Eyer Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and is now represented by male figurative Gallery XO in Wilton Manors, Florida.

Michael Breyette’s website, where original artworks and prints are available, is here.