“I have always wanted to be an artist,” Michael Patrick Bailey says. “I think I came alive being an artist, yet it has changed a lot over the years … what that looks like. I never studied art — I’m generally a self-taught painter.”
Born in Indianapolis but raised primarily in Ohio, the Newburgh resident cites his experience as a sportsman and love of the outdoors as influences that led him to become an award-winning wildlife artist. “I’m a second-generation Eagle Scout. I was in Scouting all the way through my teenage years, and I worked at summer camps — it’s part of my DNA,” he says.
After leaving New York City in 2016, he spent nearly 10 years living in Los Angeles, California, indulging his love for “camping, fishing and painting all the way up and down the state,” he says. It was there that he really honed his craft — and discovered his passion. “I started with watercolor wash. Then one day, on kind of a whim, I just tried oils. From the first moment, I was, like, home,” he says. “I wish somebody had told me sooner that I would enjoy oils this much.”
His wildlife art gained notice: A first-place finish in the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s 2026 Collectible Conservation Stamp Art Show led to his painting of an American pika adorning the state’s conservation stamp. Along the way, his work was shown — and racked up more awards — at exhibitions and contests in Sacramento, California; Manitoba, Ontario, Canada; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Honolulu, Hawaii. “But the Midwest has always been home for me,” he says. In 2024, he left California and joined his parents in Newburgh.
Regional art enthusiasts can find Bailey’s work for sale at Inman Art + Frames and on display through Oct. 25 at Indiana State Museum & Historic Sites’ 102nd annual Hoosier Art Salon exhibition, plus at an upcoming Ohio Valley Art League show in Henderson, Kentucky. Since moving to Indiana, Bailey has earned 20 awards, including Best in Show and the Purchase Award at the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art’s 2025 Bronze Buffalo Festival and Paintout and three awards at the 2026 First Brush of Spring plein air event in New Harmony.
“I’ve read about other artist’s lives, their biographies and what they did. It’s interesting to see what commonalities they and I share, even across countries and centuries,” he says. “[In the creation of a] masterpiece — I may not be there yet — we have the same gig, which is interesting and unexpected for me.”
When You Go
“Living / Room”
Oct. 12, 2026-January 2027
Gallery 101, 101 N. Water St., Henderson, Kentucky
