Michael Duane's passion for chasing the sky began in childhoood. As a seven-year-old witnessing his first Kansas tornado, he felt a fierce mix of fear and awe. It was that moment that ignited a lasting fascination with the Midwest's ever changing skies. To Michael, this landscape isn't just scenery, it's a lifelong connection with nature, painted in pastels and oils. 

Born in 1958 in Kansas City and raised in Overland Park, Michael earned a BFA in Design from the University of Kansas in 1980. He's since earned Signature and Master Pastelist status with the Mid America Pastel Society, and holds Signature recognition from the Pastel Society of America. 

Through years of development, Duane honed a pastel technique that prioritizes smooth, immersive shapes over minute detail. he embeds pigment into paper with his fingers, creating ethereal, blanket-like fields topped by bold, stylized cloudscapes. The results exist in an elegant space between abstract and representational, drawing viewers into both calm serenity and dramatic energy. It also creates a dreamlike atmosphere, with clouds appearing to drift by. 

Originally working exclusively in pastel, Michael has since embraced oils alongside his signature pastel landscapes. With oils, Duane builds scenes more slowly, layering color and texture to create a sense of timeless weight. His oil paintings feel a bit more grounded offering a counterbalance to the more otherworldly quality of his pastels. This transition allows richer texture and expanded depth, though the central theme endures: powerful weather phenomena meeting serene land. 

The American Midwest has long served as both a real and symbolic frontier, an expanse where nature, culture, and history intersect. This recalls the 19th-century belief of Manifest Destiny, when Americans saw the western frontier as their divine right. But where historical depictions often glorified conquest, Duane's work is more meditative. His fields and skies are not tools of domination, but areas for awe, reflection, and humility. There is a tension in the stillness, that the land still holds the memory of the past and its consequences.

Michael captures this junction with a haunting clarity, using pastel  and oil landscapes not just to depict the land, but to evoke the deeper currents of nature as a source with the Sublime grandeur of the vast plains and monumental storm clouds. This creates often a viseral reaction from viewers. 

The Flint Hills and other Kansas prairies become, in his hands, not merely a regional subject, but a sense of national identity and belonging. These paintings are of place, yes, but also of ambition, struggle, and transcendence. 

Michael's paintings are not just landscape scenes; they are experiences. Through his use of both pastels and oils, he gives voice to land itself. 

Always Live Inspired. -HC