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“Find Another Word for Guilt – Pride” | Michelle Cyr

Title: “Find Another Word for Guilt – Pride”
Artist: Michelle Cyr
Medium: oil on aluminum panel
Size: 18” x 20”
Artist Statement: I am passionate about finding the life lessons shown in people’s hands. My realistic oil paintings are larger than life. They showcase the hard work, pain, passion, and love of Everyday Legends.
When I was a young girl, an old woman came to live with us. She was dying. After school, I would race to her room so we could watch her favorite soap opera. I would know her for only a little over a year, but we had a unique and special bond. Many years after her death, when I was an adult, I was shocked to learn that she was my biological grandmother. Her beautiful hands showed me a love I would never be able to return, and inspired my current passion.
The worn hands that I paint hold more stories than can be written in words. It’s as if every wrinkle holds a secret, and every scar a lesson. Respectfully, through my art, I wish to show the beauty of this older generation, almost gone, through their hands.

Bio: Michelle Cyr is an emerging artist with a summer studio in Ladysmith, Wisconsin and winter studio in Fulton, Texas. Born in Connecticut and having a love for creating art, attended Western Connecticut State University in pursuit of a degree in Graphic Arts. It is in Connecticut that formidable relationships were formed that strongly influence her work today.
Cyr has run two businesses that lead her to her true calling the fine arts. These businesses were sold and are still running today. Cyr’s entrepreneurial skills and discipline and dedication are key components in her current art business.
Her work is placed in private collections around the USA.

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Who We Are

Military Experience and the Arts, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose primary mission is to work with veterans and their families to publish short stories, essays, poems, and artwork in our biannual publication, As You Were: The Military Review, periodic editions of Blue Nostalgia: The Journal of Post-Traumatic Growth and others. To the best of our ability, we pair each author or poet that submits work to us with a mentor to work one-on-one to polish their work or learn new skills and techniques.

Our staff is based all over the country and includes college professors, professional authors, veterans’ advocates, and clinicians. As such, most of our services are provided through email and online writing workshops.

All editing, consultations, and workshops are free of charge. Veterans and their families pay nothing for our services, and they never will.

Under our Publications tab, there are more than two dozen volumes of creative work crafted by veterans and their family members as well as a virtual art gallery. Our blog posts feature short pieces that cover a wide range of opinion editorials, literary reviews, and profiles on veteran artists and writers.

Please consider spending some time navigating our site and reading and seeing the fine work of veterans and their families from around the globe.

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