About MIKE

My art experience in design, illustration and fine art spans 50 years. As Professor Emeritus and former chair of the Department of Visual Arts and Music at Columbia College I taught a variety of art classes, including graphic design illustration, typography, advanced drawing, and printmaking. I received my MFA in drawing from the University of Missouri, and my BFA from Georgetown College.

My signature works evolve from numerous thumbnail sketches, then beginning a drawing with expressive gestures using the ink-soaked plume of a feather. From those initial strokes, I weave an array of patterns into detailed, whimsical abstractions. Intricate, expressive, and sometimes humorous, my work is complex and full of texture, evolving over dozens of hours spent dipping my pen into an my cut glass 1909 inkwell.

The following is from an article by Aarik Danielsen, Columbia Tribune, May 14, 2023:

To receive all his drawings stretch out to offer, viewers should approach them with a few principles in mind:
•Take the craft, but not yourself, serious.
• Look between — and around, and directly at — the lines.
• Be willing to find the beautiful in the bizarre, the bizarre in the beautiful and yourself somewhere among it all.

That is, approach the work as Sleadd does.

Getting beneath the skin of a person or story, he brings the stuff of life to the surface. Some of Sleadd's details are actual, some fantastical; but like a poet who uses license to inch closer to real, messy humanity, he shows us who we are through invention.

Many of my drawings range in size from 15"x22" to 26"x40". Smaller (and larger) drawings, prints, mixed media art and signed archival reproductions are available. Contact me for a personal showing and/or purchase. Currently my artwork can also be purchased at Melissa Williams Fine Art on 9th Street above Bluestem in Columbia.

All images on this web site are the property of Mike Sleadd and cannot be used without my written permission.

Current, recent and future exhibits

This was the third two-artist exhibition that Chris and I have had. The first was at William Woods University and the last one at the Kansas City Artist Coalition Gallery. These previous shows featured Chris’ assemblage sculpture with my ink drawings and prints. in this exhibit Chris displayed beautiful abstract paintings.

I am part of a group of ten artists who were commissioned to create art based on Biblical parables. The Kasper Collection of Contemporary Biblical Art will be displayed beginning in winter 2026. The show includes works by several Central Missouri artists and one from Iowa: Matt Ballou, Jane Mudd, Nora Othic, Askia Bilal, Shannon Soldner and Colleen Smith to name a few.

The “Tower of Babel” (below) is one of my four ink drawings in this exhibition, which will be opening at Columbia College, on January 6th, 2026. Details later.