About The Artist
Michael K. Davenport
Wichita-based mixed media artist, painter, graphic designer, curator, and community arts organizer.
Artist / Designer / Community Builder
Michael K. Davenport
The Elevator Pitch For the impatient.
Hi! Michael K. Davenport here. I make acrylic paintings, mixed-media work, and installations about masculinity, vulnerability, and the queer experience-for the girls, gays, and theys with big emotions and a strong exterior.
The Deep Dive If you've got another minute.
Michael K. Davenport is a Wichita-based mixed media artist, painter, and graphic designer whose work explores masculinity, vulnerability, and queer identity through painting, drawing, and installation. He earned a BFA in Printmaking from Wichita State University, where he developed a love for process, layering, and image-making that continues to shape his practice today.
His work centers on the tension between strength and softness. Using acrylic, oil pastel, found materials, and sewn canvas, Davenport creates layered figures and immersive installations that draw from personal relationships, queer intimacy, and lived experience. Humor, bright color, and playful visual language often invite viewers in first, while deeper conversations around identity, desire, shame, resilience, and connection slowly reveal themselves beneath the surface.
Originally focused on two-dimensional work, Davenport's practice has grown into large-scale installations that encourage viewers to move through and around the work rather than simply observe it. His projects often blur the line between personal narrative and collective experience, exploring how memory, relationships, and community shape who we become.
In 2025, Davenport received the Arts Thrive Grant from the City of Wichita Department of Arts and Cultural Services, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, to create Threads of Pride, a community-centered exhibition supporting LGBTQIA+ artists and youth. He later received a Wichita Arts Council grant to produce Surface/Self, his first full-scale installation project, inviting the public to help create fabric figures through open community art-making events.
A 2026 Artist INC participant, Davenport continues to expand his practice through material experimentation, collaboration, and community engagement. Whether creating an intimate drawing or a room-sized installation, his work asks what it means to be seen, to be vulnerable, and to exist authentically in a world that often asks us to perform instead.
Artist Statement The work, in my own words.
Have you ever considered the layers of yourself-the parts you show the world and the ones you keep tucked away? My work invites viewers to explore those layers, both within the artwork and within themselves. Through color, abstraction, and vulnerability, I create space for emotional honesty, connection, and reflection.
My practice explores the link between masculinity and vulnerability, reshaping strength through authenticity. I often depict physically strong men in tender, emotionally exposed moments, challenging traditional expectations of power. Drawing from personal experiences with friends, lovers, and fatherhood-past and present-I use the figure as a vessel to examine intimacy, expectation, shame, resilience, and desire.
Working across drawing, painting, printmaking, and installation, I create layered mixed media pieces on paper and canvas, often incorporating life-size canvas cutouts and found objects. I frequently use pattern, abstraction, and repetition of imagery within my compositions, building visual rhythm while reinforcing emotional themes. These layers function both visually and metaphorically, revealing and concealing emotion while reflecting the complexity of identity. Humor, double meanings, and moments of whimsy soften tension and invite deeper engagement.
In conversation with queer artists who came before me, my work honors histories of visibility and resistance while building connections to the present. As a queer polyamorous man and father raised in a conservative culture, I extend this practice beyond the studio through community-based LGBTQIA+ work. By amplifying underrepresented voices and fostering inclusive spaces, I aim to transform personal narrative into collective dialogue-celebrating the layered, complex experience of becoming fully oneself.
Exhibitions / Awards / Experience
Curriculum Vitae
View a current CV with exhibitions, grants, education, community projects, and selected professional experience.
View CV