Michael Godfrey is a representational landscape artist whose work hangs in many private and corporate collections. Born in Germany in l958 and raised in North Carolina, he earned a BA in Fine Arts and began his painting career in oils and watercolors. He spends hours photographing and sketching, preparing for a well thought out painting.

Michael Godfrey's work has been juried into the National Arts for the Parks competition Top 100 six times. In 1996 he won the Landscape Award and in 1998 he won the Bronze medal for a painting of Yellowstone National Park. American Artist magazine featured Michael Godfrey on the cover in an article "Techniques for Winning Landscapes" (Sept. 1998).

Michael describes his style as a combination of George Inness' impressionism with the moods of an Albert Bierstadt painting. "I paint," he says "to help people notice the special moments that happen every day, especially the drama when light first splashes across a scene." From different perspectives and different times of day, he works to capture and interpret the varying moods of light. His paintings focus on light filtering through the landscape. In handling of color and surface, Godfrey softens the edges implying detail rather than actively stating it, concentrating on the experience of the moment, reveling in the warm glow of sunlight on the landscape.

On a series of painting trips in recent years, Michael has traveled to paint the quiet beauty of marshes along the Chesapeake Bay of Maryland to the grandeur of the Rocky Mountain ranges in the West. Typically, he starts a major work using small oil studies done on location. These field studies provide color accuracy and photographs provide special details.