Michael Sarich (b. 1955, Chicago) is an artist based in Verdi, Nevada, where he has taught as an Associate Professor of Painting & Drawing at the University of Nevada since 1989. Sarich received an MFA from The University of Oklahoma; BFA from Northern Illinois University, and studied printmaking at the College of Salzburg in Austria.

Born the year Disneyland opened, and raised in Chicago in the 60s, Sarich’s early exposure to art was through comics, as well as the Chicago-based underground art of the Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists. His similarly saturated iconographic works in printmaking, painting, ceramics, and sculpture have been included in many national and international exhibitions. He has received numerous awards, fellowships, and residencies, including at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, The Robert M. MacNamara Foundation in Maine, and Visual Arts Fellowship from the Nevada Arts Council.

Despite living with Parkinson’s Disease since 2000, Sarich has maintained a rigorous studio practice. In 2007, he was a recipient of The Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant. The following year the Nevada Museum of Art organized a major retrospective exhibition of his work entitled “Like, Love, Lust” with accompanying book publication. Since that time he has continued to exhibit work, most recently in Cologne and Munich, Germany in 2017 and 2018.