Michelle Sakhai

Michelle Sakhai was born in 1983[1] to a Japanese mother and Iranian father, spending her youth in New York.[2] She graduated from Hofstra University with a BA in Art History and minor in Fine Arts, and received her MFA from Academy of Art University.[3] She has also studied in Venice, Italy; Barcelona at the d’Arts Plastique I Disseny; and France at the Marchutz Academy of Fine Art in Aix en Provence.[4][5]

Sakhai is an abstract expressionist artist bringing spirituality into her paintings.[4] Her paintings have been created using oils and mixed mediums such as metal leaf.[6][7] Her solo exhibitions include the 2012 exhibition Awakenings, shown at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco.[3] Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions at venues including Lehman College[8] and Stanford Art Spaces.[9] In 2016 her paintings were the focus of the book AWAKENING: The Paintings of Michelle Sakhai.[10] That year her work was shown in the solo exhibition Treasured Elements at the Madelyn Jordon Fine Art Gallery.[11] In September 2019, Sakhai opened her exhibition Arcana: Interpretations of the Tarot at the same gallery.[5]

In 2017 Sakhai became the artist-in-residence for the Fairmont San Francisco.[12] She taught painting at the University of California, Berkeley,[3] in addition to teaching Transformative Art at the Harlem Hospital Center and Primordial Sound Meditation at the Chopra Center. Currently she serves on the HCLAS Dean's Advisory Board at Hofstra University.[13]