Michael Berryhill believes in nonideological art. Art that does not take part in a built-in dialogue or response. Even when the work contains specific intentionality and/or ideologically charged forms and subjects, it communicates strangely, providing a viewer a singular engagement with a handmade thing. Using representation and abstraction, Berryhill plays with ideas of perception and understanding while creating an accessible object for anyone who stands in front of it.

Berryhill’s work is finished when it separates itself from learned concepts, ideology, and cultural habit, and instead exists in sensation, basic human emotion, and feeling. The paintings are made to withstand an endless life of being looked at, from the time they’re completed on into the future for as long as they physically exist.