CHARLOTTE, NC.- The Mint Museum of Art presents VantagePoint IV - Creighton Michael: Patterns of Perception, through Sunday, July 3, 2005. The visual vocabularies of Creighton Michael’s paintings are literally derived from nature. His paintings are built layer upon layer of markings that incorporate such ideas as Surrealist automatism, chance theory and the aesthetics of Japanese gardens. Michael’s representations of nature resemble underwater life forms, dazzling constellations, or a complex surface membrane that hints at an underlying structure. Michael’s FIELD series investigates the tension between surface texture and the illusion of space within the picture plane. Exploring the fusion of elements taken from painting, sculpture and drawing, Michael applies paint to a convex, curved panel, thereby encouraging the viewer to experience both physical and illusionist space. While Michael references nature, he intends that the works be "understood at meditations [rather] than as illustrations."