About Michelle Cobbin - Inspiration & Influences

Artist Statement

Michelle Cobbin is a Brighton-based painter whose artwork reflects a lifelong pursuit of peace, inner and outer. Combining her experience as a yogi and meditator with her creative practice, she produces abstracted landscape paintings that evoke calm, simplicity, and connection.

Born and raised in rural Suffolk, Michelle’s early years were spent next to a vast US military airbase in Lakenheath. This profoundly shaped her perspective in different ways. The flat, open landscapes of East Anglia have remained a key influence, providing a backdrop for her exploration of emotional depth, in regards to both the inner world and the world at large. Her art features minimalist compositions and thoughtful colour palettes, designed to inspire reflection and evoke a range of moods and feelings.

In 2023, the news that nuclear weapons would be returning to the Lakenheath airbase, after a 15-year hiatus following the end of the Cold War, prompted Michelle to create a new series of work. These paintings draw on her memories of living near the base in the 1970s and 1980s, a time when nuclear weaponry was a more socially prominent issue – all the more so in Lakenheath with the relentless noise of fighter jets flying overhead. This series employs child-like imagery to explore the emotional and societal impacts of militarisation, and seeks to offer a poignant perspective on the interface of war and peace.

Michelle’s art is rooted in her ongoing exploration of the presence and absence of peace – whether through creating meditative works that evoke serenity in the viewer, a sense of foreboding, or sparking conversations about militarisation and its consequences.