Wednesday
Oct222025
Mike Mitchell 'Son' (Frog) Print Available
Wednesday, October 22, 2025 
Artist: Mike Mitchell
Title: Son (Frog)
Medium: Giclee Print
Size: 11 x 14 Inches
Edition: 100
Price: $75
Mike Mitchell is an American illustrator and painter born in 1982 who lives and works in Austin, Texas. He studied graphic design at the University of Texas, where he learned to merge bold composition with narrative clarity, a skill that now fuels his instantly recognizable pop culture portraits. Working primarily in acrylic on panel, Mitchell builds each image through smooth, graphic layers of color, allowing the wood grain to remain visible so that every piece feels both polished and organic.
His breakout moment arrived in 2008 with a portrait of then candidate Barack Obama surrounded by retro comic book speed lines, an image that went viral and taught him that social media could propel a career as surely as gallery reviews. Since then he has created luminous paintings of movie characters, musicians and internet memes, rendering each subject with wide eyes and saturated hues that echo 1980s lunchboxes while radiating contemporary optimism. 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 process begins as digital sketches that he refines into vector shapes, then translates by hand onto panel using masking tape and tiny brushes to achieve edges sharp enough to cut glass. Recurring symbols such as lightning bolts, confetti bursts and starry backgrounds function as visual exclamation points, amplifying the heroic mood of each portrait.
When he is not painting, he collects vintage toys and records, gathering reference material that feeds future compositions. By merging mid century advertising with twenty first century celebrity, Mike Mitchell proves that a single well crafted image can still compete with the visual noise of an entire city block.
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