SOULWORK: Post Conversation With Artist Michel Delgado

Michel Delgado was born on the West Coast of Africa, in Dakar, Senegal. Pursuing a path to the arts from a young age, his work has become an outlet for inquiry, honesty, and memory.

Throughout the 1980’s he lived in Paris, exploring and participating in the major European city’s art scene. The painter immigrated to the United States in 1988, where he lived in Massachusetts and continued his career. First exhibited in the Southern region of Florida and Philadelphia, Delgado is now based in Chicago and frequently travels the country for his exhibitions.

His work has become more widely known in the past decade, having been acquired by private collectors throughout the nation, and is now a part of the public collections of the Plain Arts Museum in Fargo, North Dakota, and American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. 

In 2014 his work was featured in the Fox Television Network series Empire, alongside works by Kehinde Wiley. Michel is a resident artist at the ZHOU B ART CENTER.

Rose Cannon of Cannon Fine Art in collaboration with Artist and Curator, Fran Joy, is bringing ‘Soul works’, a collection of art by artists of color, both renowned and emerging, to the Evanston Art Center, invited Michel to be a featured artist in SOULWORKS, and his image Michel Delgado, Confused Circus, 2018 was selected as the exhibition image.  

Investigation: What responsibility do artists have to display the times in their art? How do artists impact their environment and contribute to the overall vitality of a city?