Instructor: Mike Wise

Mike Wise
 Biography: Michael Wise was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. While he grew up in an urban environment, Mike gravitated to the outdoors, camping in the Adirondacks and scuba diving along the New England coastline. He spent endless hours as a kid sketching the various objects from nature he collected on his adventures. His passion for wildlife led him to study zoology at the University of Montana. He combined his degree in science with studies in illustration and painting, earning a B.S. in Biological / PreMedical Illustration at Iowa State University. His career path took a drastic turn after a rock-climbing injury led him to seek treatment with a chiropractic. This experience had a profound impact on him, and he enrolled Northwestern Health Science University earing a Doctor of Chiropractic degree in 1995. In recent years he returned to his art, spending much of his spare time plein air painting around Central Oregon. He has been the president of Plein Air Paintings of Oregon and has taught landscape painting classes for the DYI Cave and Sagebrushers in Bend, Oregon. As a painter his interests lie in creating lush landscapes, draped in dramatic light. He uses sculptural passages of paint to create blocks of paint that take on the shapes of rocks, trees and clouds. His work leans towards representational impressionism placed upon abstracted backgrounds. The end result is a painting that is alive, rich in color and flowing with movement. His goal is to have the viewer experience the sensation of stepping into the scene themselves. He currently shows his paintings at Hood Avenue Gallery in Sisters, Oregon

Classes by this instructor


Oil Painting: Animal Portrait

Discover the fundamental steps necessary to paint realistic animal portraits using classical oil painting techniques. This course will introduce students to best practices for oil painting and provide fundamental drawing skills needed to capture the "likeness" and realistically recreate a 3-dimensional form on canvas.
May 7-28, 2024 | 5:00pm-8:00pm | Bend