James D. Michael received his medical degree in 1953. In 1960 Dr. Michael moved his family to Sheboygan where he joined the internal medicine department of the Sheboygan Clinic. While performing his medical profession, James Michael also followed his passion for watercolor painting and retired early to devote more time to “plein air” painting. For more than 30 years Jim Michael taught watercolor painting at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and for several years at the Clearing in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. He exhibited locally and nationally, and became a signature member of the Wisconsin Watercolor Society, the Transparent Watercolor Society of America, the National Watercolor Society and the American Watercolor Society and has been the recipient of numerous awards.1

More than a thousand of his paintings hang in private and corporate collections, and many were donated to local charity benefit auctions. Dr. Michael’s murals are located at Sanderling Nature Center (Kohler Andre State Park), Trattoria Stefano in Sheboygan and the Sharon S. Richardson Community Hospice in Sheboygan Falls. A master teacher, Michael was committed to the purity of transparent watercolor and the challenge to keep his paintings simple, to say only one thing.2

1Wisconsin Watercolor Society, Paintbox News, March 2012, p. 7.

2Obituary published in the Sheboygan Press, November 15, 2011