Mike Mitchell + Michael Reeder 'Pied Kingfisher' Print Release Details
Artist: Mike Mitchell + Michael Reeder
Title: Pied Kingfisher (Reeder Variant)
Medium: Giclee Print
Size: 8 x 10 Inches
Edition: 100
Price: $???
*available in person on October 11th, 2025 at Poor Example Store in Escalon
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Mike Mitchell (born 1970, Oklahoma City) is an American illustrator and painter whose instantly recognizable brand of candy-colored Pop Surrealism has turned him into a social-media phenomenon and gallery favorite. After studying at CalArts he worked in animation and advertising, but burst onto the art scene with a 2008 portrait of then candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a halo of retro comicbook speed lines; the image went viral, was featured on cable news, and taught him that “likes” could propel a career as surely as critics.
Working digitally and in acrylic on panel, Mitchell renders pop-culture icons Batman, Conan O’Brien, David Bowie, Spock in flat, high-key palettes reminiscent of 1980s lunchboxes, then amplifies their gaze to heroic scale so they seem both worshipped and trapped by their own fame. Limited edition screen-prints sell out in minutes, while museum retrospectives at the Norman Rockwell Museum and M Modern Gallery have validated the work beyond Instagram.
Mitchell’s grassroots #TeamCoco campaign for Conan O’Brien in 2010 proved that meme culture and fine-art printmaking can coexist profitably, and his recent Just Like Us series imagines exhausted superheroes slumped on subway seats, reminding viewers that gods are mortal too. He lives and paints in Los Angeles, continuing to blur the line between fan art and collectible contemporary artifact.
