The Alpena Wildlife Sanctuary announces its Artist in Residence for the 2018 summer residency. Charles Pompilius, a portrait and landscape painter based in Detroit, will be working in Alpena, discovering the natural resources and interpreting in paint the Wildlife Sanctuary parks and waterways.

His work has been shown in exhibitions throughout the United States, including in New York, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Scottsdale and Birmingham.

Pompilius has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Central Michigan University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa. He has taught painting at the university level, and is the recipient of a Pollack-Krasner Award and a Michigan Council for the Arts Creative Artist Grant.

In 2011, Pompilius completed the official portrait of former Michigan’s Gov. Jennifer Granholm, which now hangs in the capitol rotunda in Lansing. In 2013, he painted Allan Gilmour, president emeritus, Wayne State University.

In 2016, he was commissioned to paint the official portrait of U.S. Congressman Fred Upton, now hanging in the Rayburn Building in Washington, D.C. He painted David DiChiera, founders of the Michigan Opera Theatre, in 2018.

Pompilius is currently developing a series of paintings inspired by the Great Lakes.

His career includes all aspects of art production and teaching. He currently teaches at the Paint Creek Center for the Arts in Rochester and has been an instructor/professor at College for Creative Studies in Detroit., Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and Wayne State University, among others.

He has served as artist in residence in Vermont, New York and here in Michigan. He has been an invited lecturer in Ohio and Pennsylvania as well as had numerous solo exhibitions. Additionally, he has been awarded honors and awards for much of his career.

While in Alpena, Pompilius will give a painting demonstration of his work June 13 at 2 p.m. at Art in the Loft.

The Alpena Wildlife Sanctuary invites an established artist to come to Alpena each summer as an Artist in Residence. At the end of the residency, the artist provides a piece of artwork inspired by the natural resources of the area.

Once the proposed River Center is constructed in Alpena, the body of artwork created through the Artist in Residence program will be on permanent display there.