Michael Dixon is an oil painter born in San Diego, California. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in painting and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University in painting and drawing. Dixon is currently a Full Professor of Art at Albion College. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation Emergency Grant, Puffin Foundation Grant, Blanchard Fellowship, and Phi Beta Kappa Scholar of the Year Award. Dixon has received numerous artist residencies including the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Joan Mitchell Center. His works can be found in the personal collections of artists Nick Cave and Beverly McIver, and in the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African Art. Dixon has been shown both nationally and internationally at museums, universities, art centers, alternative spaces, and galleries. His imagery explores the personal, societal, and aesthetic struggles of belonging to both "white" and "black" racial and cultural identities, yet simultaneously belonging fully to neither. The works of artists such as Robert Colescott, Beverly McIver, Michael Ray Charles, Glenn Ligon, and Kerry James Marshall have informed his work.