“Artist” may be the most modest, and yet the most accurate, description when trying to evaluate or define the man, Michael Gorban.

More than just an artist, art is his way of life and his truest means of communication. From the four-year-old child sketching his impressions of war stories and movie plots to the mature artist participating in international exhibitions. Time and again it is evident that painting fills Michael’s world to such an extent that he thinks in color, form and texture.

As a boy full of promise, Michael was sent to the academy in LVOV, then a moderate city of culture in the Soviet Russia. There he began his journey of revelations, being exposed to modern painting, impressionism, unconstrained splashes of paint, and live, effervescent color. Against a Soviet backdrop which permitted only static classical painting, Michael Gorban materialized as a LVOV Academy artist diving into the Wanton Sea of churning, animated colors.

Michael’s excellent academic footing enables him to roam continually from style to style in seemingly aimless wanderings. Actually it stems from intellectual curiosity and drive to explore and make a mark on modern art, despite its being stifled and repressed in the Soviet Union.

The essence of Michael Gorban is artist. He cannot be imagined as belonging elsewhere but to that long and honorable list of artists for whom painting is the first and final word, the breath of life. Those artists whose work and curiosity make the world of painting so exciting and boundless.