Mike Garibay creates art through an active exchange between imagination and material. Using oil paint and oil pastels, he develops vivid compositions in which color, gesture, and shape move freely across the surface. His works range from expansive canvases to intimate pieces on panels, allowing him to explore how scale changes the emotional experience of an image.
While Garibay’s abstract forms often appear impulsive, their placement reflects an underlying sense of order. Contrasting colors and shifting shapes generate movement while maintaining harmony across each composition.
His artistic range also extends to carefully rendered portraits, which highlight his observational skills and attention to detail. These controlled works offer another perspective on an artist often associated with expressive freedom. Garibay further applies his visual ideas to murals, transforming architectural spaces through color and form. Instead of following a predetermined narrative, he responds to each artwork as it develops, allowing the creative process to determine its identity.
Mike Garibay’s vibrant watercolor explores how color, fluidity, and texture can generate meaning without relying on a clearly defined subject. Expansive passages of blue, red, black, gray, and muted gold move across an open background, creating an image that feels spontaneous and carefully considered. The composition reflects the natural behavior of watercolor while revealing the artist’s ability to guide that behavior into a balanced visual experience.
Two large formations dominate the artwork. The upper shape is filled primarily with blue, interrupted by areas of red, black, gray, and pale green. It stretches horizontally across the surface like a cloud, distant landscape, or floating mass. Below it, a broader formation moves through red, blue, black, and earthy gray. Its curved edges and layered textures suggest something organic, although its identity remains open to interpretation.
The relationship between these two formations creates the central tension of the piece. They appear separated by an irregular band of unpainted paper, yet they remain visually connected through their shared colors and textures. This open space functions as more than an empty background. It gives the composition room to breathe while creating the impression of distance, light, or movement between the colored areas.
Garibay allows watercolor to flow, spread, and gather across the paper. Some passages appear soft and transparent, while others are dense and textured. Red pigment forms branching shapes and narrow pathways, while blue settles into broad pools and darker edges. Black creates weight throughout the lower section and anchors the more delicate areas of color. These changing surfaces show how water and pigment interact, producing effects that cannot be entirely predicted.
Small droplets of red, blue, and black appear around the larger forms. Their presence strengthens the feeling of spontaneity and extends the composition beyond its main structures. A single red circle near the right edge and several scattered marks near the bottom create pauses within the image. These details may seem accidental, yet their placement contributes to the artwork’s overall rhythm.
The flowing red passage in the lower left has an especially active quality. It curves inward, opens around areas of untouched paper, and connects with darker blue and black sections. Its shape may recall a river, a network of veins, a moving creature, or an aerial view of changing terrain. Elsewhere, granular textures suggest stone, coral, weathered walls, or natural formations seen under a microscope.
Such associations demonstrate the imaginative possibilities of abstraction. Garibay does not require the viewer to identify a specific place or object. Instead, he offers visual clues that can lead toward different interpretations. One viewer may see an underwater environment, while another may imagine clouds, islands, biological forms, or a map of an unfamiliar world.
Color carries the emotional direction of the artwork. The blue areas introduce a sense of depth and openness, while the red passages add warmth, urgency, and movement. Black and gray provide contrast, giving the image weight and complexity. Against the pale background, these colors appear to expand and recede, creating a continually shifting relationship between energy and stillness.
The painting also expresses a balance between artistic intention and the independent nature of watercolor. Garibay directs the composition, yet he allows liquid pigment to leave blooms, stains, layered edges, and unexpected textures. This collaboration with the medium gives the artwork its sense of vitality. The surface records both deliberate decisions and moments of discovery.
Through its fluid shapes and varied textures, the work invites viewers to slow down and explore how its parts connect. New details emerge with extended viewing, from delicate color transitions to darker areas that appear almost sculptural. The result is an expressive watercolor that communicates through sensation, movement, and visual association.
The artwork is available as a limited edition of 100 prints, signed by Mike Garibay and produced on museum-quality paper. Each print measures 24 × 36 inches and is priced at $900, shipped securely in a protective roll. Orders may be placed directly through the artist at garibaymike9@gmail.com.
