Mike Garibay approaches art as a conversation between intuition, material, and emotion. His abstract compositions are filled with vivid colors, fluid gestures, and unexpected forms that create a lively sense of motion. Working primarily in oil paint and oil pastel, he applies this expressive approach to large canvases as well as smaller works on canvas and panels.
Beneath the apparent spontaneity of Garibay’s imagery is a thoughtful arrangement of shape, color, and space. Each element helps establish rhythm and balance, allowing the composition to feel energetic without losing its structure.
His practice also includes detailed portraiture, demonstrating careful observation and technical control. This precision offers an engaging contrast to the freedom of his abstract work. Garibay further expands his ideas through murals, where color and form interact directly with architectural surroundings. Guided by the creative process rather than a predetermined story, he allows every artwork to develop its own mood, direction, and identity.
Mike Garibay’s abstract composition brings color, geometry, and expressive movement together through an approach the artist describes as “randomness controlled.” Although its many shapes seem to meet unpredictably, their arrangement reveals a deliberate visual structure. Every curve, line, and block of color contributes to a composition that feels spontaneous while remaining carefully balanced.
The artwork is built around a dense central formation surrounded by broad fields of orange and blue. These contrasting colors divide the background and create two distinct areas of visual energy. The warm orange section introduces heat and intensity, while the blue area suggests openness and calm. Between them, the central arrangement functions almost like a bridge, joining opposite emotional states within a single image.
Large curved forms in green, yellow, blue, gold, gray, and black overlap throughout the center. Their rounded edges create a sense of rotation, as though the entire structure is slowly turning. At the same time, sharp points, straight lines, and narrow geometric fragments interrupt this circular movement. The combination produces tension between softness and precision, freedom and control, and movement and stability.
Several shapes resemble parts of familiar objects without becoming completely recognizable. Some forms suggest leaves, wings, instruments, masks, machinery, or sections of the human body. A large yellow curve on the left contains a small black circle and may remind viewers of an eye or the head of an imaginary creature. The green and blue areas could be interpreted as pieces of a landscape, while the striped black-and-white passages resemble architectural plans, strings, or mechanical structures.
These possible associations are never fixed. Garibay allows the viewer to search for meaning without providing a single explanation. A shape may appear organic from one perspective and mechanical from another. This openness gives the artwork its universal emotional quality. Rather than describing one event or personal story, the composition creates a visual experience that different viewers can understand through their own memories and feelings.
Black outlines hold the image together and give the individual sections clarity. Some boundaries are heavy and direct, while others are made from groups of fine parallel lines. The striped areas introduce texture and provide a measured contrast to the broader color fields. They also draw attention toward the center, where the composition becomes more intricate and tightly layered.
The ink creates varied surfaces across the work. In some areas, the colors appear dense and evenly applied. In others, lighter passages and visible changes in tone allow the surface of the paper to remain present. These subtle variations prevent the flat shapes from feeling rigid. Instead, they reveal the movement of the artist’s hand and add a tactile character to the composition.
Color carries much of the artwork’s emotional force. Bright green communicates freshness and energy, while deep blue adds weight and depth. Orange surrounds the composition with warmth, and the gold and gray sections provide quieter transitions between the more vivid areas. Black introduces contrast and anchors the image, preventing its many colors from becoming visually disconnected.
Garibay’s idea of controlled randomness can be seen in the relationship between all these elements. The composition avoids conventional symmetry, yet it does not feel disorganized. Larger shapes provide stability, smaller fragments create activity, and repeated colors connect distant parts of the image. What initially appears accidental gradually reveals an internal rhythm.
The artwork ultimately presents abstraction as a shared emotional language. It does not require viewers to identify a particular subject before responding to it. Instead, color, line, scale, and movement create an immediate experience that can suggest curiosity, tension, joy, uncertainty, or transformation.
This work is available as a limited edition of 100 prints, signed by Mike Garibay and produced on museum-quality paper. Each print measures 24 × 36 inches and is priced at $900, shipped in a protective roll. Orders can be placed directly through the artist at garibaymike9@gmail.com.
