Michael Farrar
City’s 2007 Design Our Cover! Contest Winner

Written by Elizabeth Parsons
Photography by Karl Phillips

Meet Michael Farrar, the winner of City’s Design Our Cover! Contest. Farrar’s “The Barbeque Dance” graces City’s cover this month, selected from over 150 entries submitted by talented readers located all over Southwest Virginia, from Roanoke to Rocky Mount to Rappahannock and beyond. 

The Covington native is somewhat of a Renaissance man when it comes to his work. Painting for over 40 years, Farrar is best known for his pieces created in a spectrum of mediums including watercolor, acrylic, oil, and other less conventional ones, like a combination of magic marker, colored pencil, and graphite—those he used to create the contest-winning piece. To Farrar, “The Barbeque Dance” answers City’s quest for a cover that captures the “essence of summer” because he’s depicting the bright spirit in which “everyone breaks out the ‘barbie’ for the first big cook-off.” The onset of summer is a lively time for R&R, friends, and family. According to the artist, his jovial subject celebrates it by breaking into dance as he lights up the grill.

Farrar created the 14”x17” “The Barbeque Dance” in Spring of ’07. It has since been sold, but you can see more of Farrar’s work at 202 Market in downtown Roanoke, where it is hanging throughout the month of August. The artist also keeps an open-to-the-public studio in his hometown of Covington. He is a frequenter of the outdoor art festival circuit; he showed work at this year’s Sidewalk Art Show as well as the Alleghany Highlands Arts & Crafts festival among many others. Farrar looks for “quality shows” all throughout the East Coast, and typically participates in up to 12 a year.

The artist is a signature member of the Virginia Watercolor Society. In addition to his winning selection in City’s Design Our Cover! Contest, Farrar has had pieces selected for the Southern Watercolor Society show, the Virginia Watercolor show, and the Baltimore Watercolor show.

“Snatches of conversation, music, and puns,” are among Farrar’s sources of inspiration.  “The Barbeque Dance” is part of what he calls his “Nurd” series, a humorous collection featuring characters who are a little “off-plum,” he says. Some of these characters, in fact, are inspired by people he knows—or by the artist himself. “A lot of people try to hide their strangeness, to blend in. I say, glorify it!”

Farrar received a degree in Art Education from Concord University in Athens, West Virginia. Today, he dedicates much of his time to his work, and augments his income by teaching art and working in retail.  You can contact the artist by emailing follyhall@aol.com.

Posted: August 1st, 2007 under Visions.
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~Elizabeth Parsons’ passion for culture and the arts has earned her a degree in Anthropology and stamps on her passport from places as diverse as Ecuador, Turkey and the European Union. Recently working as a Writer and Event Planner for the Grammy Music Awards in San Francisco, CA, she returns to her hometown of Roanoke to pursue her M.F.A./Creative Writing at Hollins University. Elizabeth can be contacted at 540.345.6300 or elizabeth@citymagazineonline.com.