Santiago Michalek

The artist began his adult life restoring vintage Volkswagen bugs and buses. He was fascinated by the emotional attachment that his clients had with their old vehicles. His current work as a painter calls forth that same nostalgia except instead of using wrenches and welders he’s using paint and canvas to revive the narratives that exist under rusted metal frames and worn out engines. “I heard such intimate stories and memories while working on those cars,” says Michalek, “and now I hear people having the same connections through my paintings.”

“In a word I am painting ‘time’ broken into three parts. Let’s take a steam train, for example, to me it has 3 different histories – first, the overall history of how trains revolutionized industry and the mark they made on the world. Second, the story of a specific engine -when it was built, repairs, routes traveled, time and decay, restoration or abandonment. Then third, there is our story, the story of us - the gandy dancers that laid the tracks, the engineer who drove the train, or the family that took a trip across country in a passenger car. People ask me if I