Arizona Artist Spotlight: The Joy of Showing Up with Mike Margolis
Published: 04/30/2026
Meet Greater Phoenix-based artist Mike Margolis, featured in GPEC’s Color, Cloth & Culture exhibit
Some phrases carry more than their words. “Are you going on Sunday?” sounds like a simple question, but said with the right grin, in the right company, it means something else entirely. You have to see this.
That a nod to the spectacular, an inside joke between local artist Mike Margolis and those closest to him, is exactly where the painter lives as an artist.
His featured piece in the Greater Phoenix Economic Council’s Color, Cloth & Culture exhibit, Are You Going on Sunday?, centers on two women dressed in fruit bursts, stars, and unapologetic flair. The kind of characters who stop a room, who make strangers lean toward each other with a nudge. They are the spectacle the phrase was made for, and Mike put this Sunday pastime on canvas.
Mike’s creative process begins not with a blank canvas but with a feeling that sticks.
A phrase.
A mood.
A visual that lingers.
He sketches loosely, lets his characters breathe, and builds in layers of color and shape until the story finds its form. He cahses connection, the moment when someone looks at his work and feels something.
Fun
Laughter
Recognition
A little jolt of joy
Greater Phoenix feeds that impulse in ways that are hard to manufacture anywhere else. The city has a particular energy, the kind that shows up in wild outfits and big personalities and unapologetic creativity. “You never know what to expect,” Mike says. “Greater Phoenix gives me the freedom to be bold, to be playful.” That freedom is not just in the abstract —it lives on Roosevelt Row, in the murals and pop-up galleries and sidewalk conversations that spark ideas before you have had a chance to look for them.
He also credits Artlink for the steady, grounding work of connecting artists to opportunities and keeping the local scene honest and alive. For Mike, these resources are proof that art in Greater Phoenix is held up by the people within.
That belief runs through everything he makes. “Arts and culture are the heartbeat of our community,” he says. “It is how we connect, express and celebrate what makes us unique.” The best advice he has received fits neatly inside that belief: Trust your creative gift and never let it go.
He would describe Greater Phoenix’s art scene in three words: expressive, supportive and alive.
It is hard to disagree, especially when you are standing in front of a painting that makes you want to nudge the person beside you and ask: Are you going on Sunday?