Born in Ft. Worth, Texas, and raised in Aurora, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, Michael Alan Coakes is a visual artist. He started studying art at a very young age. He developed an appreciation for a wide range of artists, from Picasso and Dali to Mucha, as a result of his numerous trips to the Art Institute of Chicago.
He has benefited from the guidance of numerous schools, notably the American Academy of Art in Chicago, in discovering and developing his own style in a range of media, including drawing, painting, and photography.
During the course of the previous ten years, he has had more than 60 solo and group exhibitions, and his work is included in public and private collections across the world.
