Michelle Nicole Lowe, Artist

Michelle Nicole Lowe is an Islamorada artist painting the Keys she comes from. Her great-grandfather left Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas for Key West more than a century ago, which makes her a fifth-generation Conch, and she is raising a sixth generation here. The subjects are the ones she grew up with: tropical fish, sea turtles, wild birds, flowering plants and island landscapes, worked in watercolor and also in oils and colored pencil, in a style she describes as being about color and patterns.

The route to it was not direct. She took a finance degree at the University of Florida and worked in corporate finance in Washington, D.C. before coming home, and she spent a year studying painting in Florence. In 2023 the Monroe County Tourist Development Council commissioned her to paint the cover of the Keys Traveler for the Florida Keys bicentennial, and the resulting watercolor, "Florida Keys, 200 Years of Paradise," put one of Henry Flagler's surviving railroad bridges at its center. Her own explanation of why: as a teenager she spent evenings in front of one of those bridges watching the last sliver of sun go under, and she finds it remarkable they are still standing.

Conservation runs alongside the painting rather than behind it. She raises funds through her work for Mote Marine Laboratory and the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center, she joins cleanups, and she has been expanding into products including shirts for the Wild Bird Center. Her working rule is four words: leave nature how you found it.

She shows from a bayside gallery in Islamorada and has exhibitions planned at The Hale Gallery, also in Islamorada. Contact her directly or watch the Upper Keys arts calendar, because her work turns up in group shows across the Morada Way district through the season.