Michael Dixon is an oil painter born in San Diego, California. He received his Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Colorado at Boulder 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 received 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. Michael has received numerous artist residencies, including the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Joan Mitchell Center. His work is in the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts collection at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, and the personal collections of artists Nick Cave and Beverly McIver. Michael has been shown nationally and internationally at museums, universities, art centers, alternative spaces, and galleries. His imagery explores the personal, societal, and aesthetic struggles of belonging to "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.