Micro-Realism

Michael Deas’s stamp-scale masterpieces

by

Visual & Performing Arts

Michael Deas is likely one of the most famous artists you’ve never heard of.

As a master realist painter and one of the nation’s premier illustrators, prints of his work are bought by thousands of people every day—for pennies.

Deas works from his studio in the historic French Quarter, where he creates paintings and drawings for magazine and book covers, advertisements, and postage stamps for the United States Postal Service. He’s painted portraits of actors and politicians that grace envelopes for postcards, love letters, and birthday cards.

Deas spent his early childhood in suburban New Orleans before moving to Long Island with his family, continuing to visit New Orleans throughout his teen years. While studying art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, he maintained a studio for a time. But New Orleans was like a siren call; he moved back to the city in 1988 and rented a studio on Governor Nicholls. Eventually, he moved a few doors down from where Tennessee Williams wrote some of his earliest plays. Williams’s would be the very first portrait Deas would paint for the USPS.

“I’ve always been a fan,” he said. “If you look closely, the image includes a streetcar with a lone figure inside. That is my homage to Williams’s character, Blanche DuBois. You’ll have to use a magnifying glass. She can’t be seen with the naked eye.”

To this day, Deas has painted twenty-five portraits for postage stamps, including depictions of Hollywood stars Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Cary Grant; as well as literary icons Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain. He’s also painted political figures, such as Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Currently, he is working on three more stamps, all top secret, to be released in 2026.

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Deas still lives and paints in the French Quarter in a home he purchased in 1999. Drawn to eighteenth and nineteenth century realism, Deas said he has always been most interested in painting realistically. “That was my model since art school, although realism was not fashionable when I went to school. The style then was more conceptual.” As an illustrator, he has created magazine covers for TIME and book covers, including the iconic twentieth anniversary cover of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire in 1996.

Research is an important part of Deas’s process, especially when it comes to portraiture. “I research as many portraits and photographs as I can find,” he said. One of his TIME covers is a portrait of Benjamin Franklin. With very little reference material available, Deas used himself as a model for the portrait. “We have the same hairline,” he joked. “I also read all I can about the person I’m painting. The Postal Service always asks that the person be depicted at the height of their career.” And unlike a portrait that will hang in a gallery, the portraits Deas paints for stamps must make an impact with less than a square inch of real estate. When working on a stamp, Deas uses a smaller board, usually 4” x 6”, or as large as 6” x 9”. To get a feel for what the image will look like when it’s reduced, he holds a mirror over his shoulder and looks at the stamp.

A person must be dead for a minimum of three years before they are honored with a stamp. A committee decides who will be featured, then an artist is selected and commissioned. “I’m always glad when they call,” Deas said. Seeing his artwork on envelopes is always a thrill for the artist, who says it is an honor and a privilege to paint portraits for stamps. “To me, a stamp can be like a beautiful note on the outside of an envelope,” he said.

One of the crowning achievements in Deas’s career was when his agent called in 1991 about a potential advertising project. The art director of Columbia Pictures wanted to commission him to create a new version of their iconic “Lady Liberty” logo.

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After Deas interviewed several potential models, Ken Harrison, a friend of his who worked at The Times Picayune, suggested he talk with Jenny Joseph—who worked as a graphic artist at the newspaper. “When I met her, I knew she was the one,” Deas said. “She was British and very elegant. I stayed up all night making a costume with a sheet, and she came during her lunch hour to model. I gave her a small desk lamp without a lampshade to hold up as a torch.” At one point during the session, Joseph, who was twenty-eight at the time, asked if she could sit. “She told me that she had just learned she was pregnant.” Joseph had never modeled before and hasn’t since.

The studio loved the image, and it’s still in use today. “It’s fun to see my work on the big screen,” said Deas.

Today, Deas continues to do portrait commission work, alongside his own artistic whims. He has earned numerous awards and accolades, including five Gold Medals and two Silver Medals from the Society of Illustrators. He was presented with the Hamilton King Award in 2004 for the single best illustration of the year—his Benjamin Franklin portrait for TIME. In 2012, forty of his original drawings and paintings were displayed in a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, including his Columbia Pictures logo. When the original drawing was brought in to be installed for the show, Deas saw it for the first time in the twenty years since he finished it.

He recalled that the clouds behind Joseph had been inspired by a huge bank of cumulus clouds Deas saw forming over the Mississippi River at the time. “I had been riding my bike around town for weeks, hoping to photograph the perfect clouds when I saw them. Between the clouds and Jenny, it is a very New Orleans-based image, in many ways.”

michaeldeas.com.