Michael Ray Charles was born in 1967 in Lafayette, Louisiana, and currently lives and works between Austin, Texas, and Ghent, Belgium. He received his BA from McNeese State University in 1989 and his MFA from the University of Houston in 1993. In his work, Charles creates detailed paintings investigating racial stereotypes that are drawn from a history of American advertising, such as product packaging, billboards, radio jingles, and television commercials. Whether appropriating figures from American visual culture like Aunt Jemima or replicating visual tropes associated with minstrelsy, the artist draws connections between racist elements of American history and popular portrayals of American culture today, exposing the underlying racism present in contemporary society.