Michele Stamp grew up in Rabbittown in St John's. Her bronzes, paintings, prints, drawings, and craft pieces are in private collections in Canada, the US, and the UK, and in public collections in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. She is represented by The Leyton Gallery in Baird's Cove, St John's, where she has participated in most of the Gallery’s major group shows and in a three person show, Flowers, Landscapes and the Natural World, in October 2007. Though Michele has studied, lived, and worked in Quebec, Nova Scotia and abroad, her work remains firmly centred in her native city, where she continues to live.

In 2006, the downtown streets of St John's were home to Mermaids in the City, a fundraising arts project for Easter Seals; the design was commissioned from Michele, who was also invited to paint one (now in a private collection).

Her work has been featured in the print and broadcast media: The Telegram (St John's), The Independent (St. John’s), The Newfoundland Herald, CBC Radio (Weekend Arts Magazine), and Drawn to the Edge (City of St. John’s art collection catalogue). Her painting, Blue Irises, is the cover for the September 2007 issue of The Newfoundland Quarterly, which includes an interview with the artist. She has appeared twice on NTV's Inside the Artist's Studio, and was interviewed by CBC's Here and Now for her show Michele Stamp - Portraits. This solo exhibition, at The Resource Centre for the Arts Gallery, of thirty-two portraits in graphite, signified her extension into another medium and explored close figurative work that stands in contrast to some of her other, more conceptual or broadly stylised pieces.

While painting and sculpture remain her primary focus, she has won awards for her work in sculpture and photography (Arts and Letters, 1998, 2002) and crafts Merry Mates™, the best new product under $20 by The Newfoundland and Labrador Craft Council 2002). In addition, Michele, who has a Master's degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), has been selected to serve on the City of St John's Arts Advisory Committee (2007).

A strong sense of the connection between art and life, creativity and experience, informs her working process. Her work is inspired by her natural and built environments, the spiritual and the ephemeral: the fleeting and transitory can be caught in paint, bronze, or graphite, held in the hand or caressed by the vision. Moments and experiences recollected by the artist become the basis for memory, and the occasion for contemplation, laughter, or pleasure.

Michele is thrilled to have been invited to be Artist in Residence at the Artisan Inn in Trinity for July 2008!

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