Michael Farmer is a painter and mixed media artist who draws his inspiration from philosophy, religion, politics, and history. While earning his BFA in Media Arts at the University of Arizona, he taught himself the fundamentals of oil painting. He continued on a self-taught track in painting for 20 years, before going back to school to learn traditional techniques. He has exhibited nationally and locally, including at the Alwun House, FOUND:RE, the Herberger Theater, Modified Arts, and the Phoenix Art Museum. He is in private collections in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, New York, Connecticut, and Ireland.

The Artist himself about this work: This series of artworks focuses on American gun culture and its effects on the nation. They are mixed media art works on paper with linoleum block printing. I have incorporated a variety of finished forms including shadow boxes with assemblage and patterned fabric, altered maps, and prints on a painted background. I chose symbols reminiscent of news media infographics that are often used to make statistics easily digestible in visual form. I use the repetition of the block printing format to comment on the tragic serial repeated pattern of the subject matter. I have limited my palette to those of the United States flag: red, white, and blue, plus black. When viewed through blue and red 3D glasses the compositions take on a whole new dimension. When one eye literally sees blue and another eye sees red the art works come alive in a way unseen without this filter, just like the political filters we experience every day.
This series is a protest against the systems that allow and perpetuate violence in the United States. It is a memorial for those who have lost their lives through needless gun violence, especially the children who have died in school shootings, and those still alive who are under constant threat. It is a critique of the views and attitudes that elevate a fetish above public safety. Above all, it is an expression of love and sorrow for a country, my country, that is ill with a curable, but deadly disease.