I believe art changes our perceptions of the people and world around us, broadening our perspectives in ways that cultivate greater respect for humanity and nature.

I work mostly with acrylics, but lately I have been mixing photography and other media into my paintings, using real world subjects to create images of worlds I imagine. Currently, I find myself depicting humanity coming to terms with the immutability of Mother Nature: jungles overtake urban settings and cityscapes grow out of trees. 

In 2012 I returned to San Francisco after living in Costa Rica for four years where I opened an art gallery in an isolated village visited by international travelers drawn to the unspoiled  jungle and beaches. There I was able to immerse myself in painting, selling not only my originals, but also, more than a thousand travel-friendly reproductions. This has given me a good sense of what people like in my work. 

My studio is in the Mission District on Clarion Alley, a location covered with murals and frequented by art-loving tourists from around the world. I am almost always there Thursday through Sunday in the afternoon. Stop by and take a look.

I have spent my career studying this unique shape. With my most recent series, I look at the landscape, the roadmap to motherhood. By creating an unfamiliar landscape and printing the photos very large, I hope for the form to be examined and, once understood, open discussion. This shape represents an area of the women's body that is surrounded by debate of ownership, degradation by toxic environments, and depravation of corporate fertility centers charging exorbitant fees for women who want to become pregnant.

I think photography is an incredible way of telling stories.
The reward of finding moments and distilling feelings, to me, is like making magic. I don’t know about you, but I see pictures wherever I am.

Please Stay on Paths is a collection of images that detail the nature, the unexpected, inside the city. Golden Gate Park has always provided a wealth of secret, quiet intense images for me and has been an oasis and a refuge from city life.

My photography has been seen in the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Weekly, San Francisco magazine, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the San Francisco Examiner, SHOTS magazine, The Urbanist, SFist.com, The Huffington Post, The Bold Italic and 7×7.com. My work has appeared in juried shows and galleries in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vermont, Minneapolis, Virginia, and New Orleans.

The intersection of line and color create the journey.  To create.  To bring forth what is inside.  To share the journey that takes one home without ever leaving it.  

Though originally a painter, I have long since turned my focus to photography. I was originally focusing on landscapes like these in National Geographic to San Francisco cityscapes featured in San Francisco - A Cabby's View to the more abstract work in Haight Street Reflections.  I am particularly attracted to the spontaneous energy of urban and the multiple layering of window reflections where images are ambiguous, rapidly changing, and reality is skewed.  My recent forays into photomontage or 'compositing' are the natural extension of the constantly shifting window reflections featured promeniently in my most recent shows.  My composites aim to capture the energy of diverse environments in a landscape where Salvador Dali meets Walt Disney.

Michaela Hanemann (born in Elmshorn, Germany, 1979) studied arts with professors Peter Redecker, Verena Vernunft and Peter Krahé at Faculty of Fine Arts in Hanover (Germany), since 2008 she has been working as a free artist in regional and international art scene and has been doing regularly exhibitions.

Her main emphasis` are painting and drawing and both are combined in her new works: “My works are showing inner pictures, they tell about searching a way between self-assertion and dissolving.”

Michaela Hanemann won several awards, 2. price at “Kunstpreis Laatzen” in 2010 and 1. price of „Grüne Liga“, Berlin in 2006.

Since 2011 she has been a member of the managing committee of the regional chapter of “Bundesverband Bildender Künstler” (National Association of Artists) in Hanover, Germany and furthermore she is a founding member of society „Kunst Und Warum e.V.“, which is committed to culture and promotes arts especially in Hanover ( member of the managing committee since 2011).

My work begins with a captured image – a photograph - of something external in the perceived world which is then modified through techniques and media to provide an altered perception, an internal reaction, to that reality my methods produce images of surreal luminosity where the blurring and graying and softening of lines creates an ethereal emanation of internal light.

They are glowing from within.
 

Movement- water mist -flow
The fog rolling in from the ocean along the coast
gently softening everything and the world quiets down.

We humans are always drawn to bodies of water.
It doesn't seem to matter whether it’s the vastness of our oceans,

the stillness of a small pond, with the wind dancing on it.
It’s ever changing like life is.
We love to spend hours pondering before it.
It’s a great place to think and clear out our head and explore with our heart and soul.

We owe everything to water and light, the power of life.