About Michael Knepper
Vita Michael Knepper
After studying design, art and illustration in Trier, and getting my bachelor of arts I started my professional career in an advertising agency in Munich. After two years I switched jobs to freelancer and artist with major clients such as Siemens, Mercedes, Adidas, Bayer, Provinzial, Spatenbräu, Mustang Jeans, Jever, Samson, König-Ludwig-Musical, publishing houses (Gruner + Jahr, Burda-Verlag, Spiegel-Verlag, Warner Brothers) as well as individual art collectors all over the world.
After 2 decades I decided to turn my back to commercial work focusing on the art that expresses myself, my life and my experiences.
Portrait Art
The priority in my portrait paintings is not only to show, to capture an excellent expressive outward appearance of people or faces, but also the inner essence, their inner significance.
So I strive to reveal the character through exaggeration of physical features and expressive liveliness.
And so became portrait paintings the quintessence of my artistry and there is nothing else that gives me such a challenge and simultaneously satisfaction in my work! People I have painted so far are Nelson Mandela, Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Basquiat, JF Kennedy, Bryan Cranston alias Walter White from the TV series ‘breaking bad’, Kurt Cobain and JESUS.
ME.ART / Pop-Art
What does ME.ART stand for?
ME.ART symbolises the art of father (Michael=M) and son (Eliot=E).
Since his first days, my son Eliot watched me working while laying on my work table-it seemed so much more interesting than sleeping. Nothing changed since and 30 years later he is still my my greatest fan, co-partner and critic.
The symbiosis helped to develop our co-project ME.ART, an expressive Pop-Art style, using mostly palette knives instead of pencils. The paintings that you see are only the ‘start' of our cooperation.
Motorcycle Art
I am a passionate biker and bought a Harley Davidson Fatboy 15 years years ago. I love cruising a great part of my leisure time on my bike- preferably with my son Eliot who shares my passion of being a biker and an artist.
The inspiration for my motorcycle art was driven by ‘real life’. The biker scene is full of picturesque characters and maschines and I just had to paint them on canvas, resulting in a calender of 12 leading national and international bikebuilders painted as devils with their signature bikes. It was sold successfully in 2009 and 2010.
In Sturgis I met the well known art dealer Ron Segal who has been representing me for a couple of years now. As the ‘spirit of Sturgis’ took hold of me, I painted the art work SOS (Spirit Of Sturgis) which was an enormous success in the scene. Because of this previous success the production company FOX took notice of my work and shortly after I became the “official licensed artist for Sons of Anarchy”.
Material
As far as the material for my paintings are concerned, I prefer acrylic and oil colours, dozens of pencils and canvas. I stay with the ‘traditional painting’ and the computer is only used to produce high-quality prints on canvas, which can be ordered in various sizes over my homepage.