MYRA PORTER

Artist Biography

A Life of Creativity, Reinvention, and Discovery

Myra Porter is an Irish-American contemporary artist whose paintings explore the relationship between landscape, abstraction, intuition, and discovery. Working across representational and abstract painting, she creates compositions that invite viewers to discover unexpected forms, figures, and narratives within layers of color and movement.

Born in the United States to Irish immigrant parents, Porter grew up in Miami, Florida, where her creative instincts emerged at an early age. With college financially beyond her family's reach, she enrolled in cosmetology during high school, initially to avoid taking chemistry. What began as a practical choice became the discovery of an extraordinary passion. By her junior year, she was cutting hair daily and demonstrating her techniques to fellow students at her teacher's encouragement.

At just 21, Porter opened her own salon, beginning a long and successful entrepreneurial career.

At age 27, while raising two children and navigating a difficult divorce, she made another life-changing decision. Inspired by her own experiences and a desire to advocate for other women, she enrolled in junior college. She completed her bachelor's degree in just 22 months before entering law school at night.

During her legal education, Porter married, welcomed two additional children, and temporarily interrupted her studies, returning when her youngest was eight months old. By age 35, she had earned her law degree and passed the Florida Bar.

Although she had pursued law with a genuine desire to help others, Porter discovered that legal practice did not provide the creative fulfillment she sought. After six months, she returned to her entrepreneurial roots, expanding her salon into what she describes as Miami's first day spa.

The pioneering 5,000-square-foot establishment combined a large salon, full-service spa, café, and Pilates studio, bringing beauty, wellness, hospitality, and community together in a single destination.

Throughout her career, Porter remained deeply connected to the creative possibilities of color, form, texture, and personal expression. She continued to enjoy hairdressing until her retirement from the profession in 2022.

Her journey into painting began in 2015 with the landscapes surrounding her family's Tennessee ranch. Inspired by the natural beauty of the countryside, she initially explored representational landscape painting. As her confidence grew, so did her willingness to experiment, gradually introducing greater abstraction into her compositions.

Landscape remains an essential part of her artistic practice. Photographs taken during her travels frequently provide the starting point for paintings that may retain recognizable elements or evolve into entirely unexpected compositions.

Porter's creative process is both intuitive and deliberate. She frequently rotates her canvases, discovering figures, animals, and forms that emerge spontaneously from the painted surface. Depending on the direction of each composition, she may develop these unexpected images or subtly emphasize them through surrounding color and shape.

In 2019 Porter began her M.F.A study at the University of Miami, This endeavor was cut short in March 2020, when classes went to Zoom only due to the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown.

In response, Porter converted 900 square feet of her salon into an art studio and introduced collaborative painting into space. She invited a fellow University of Miami M.F.A. candidate to teach drawing and painting to her staff and encouraged employees and clients to add marks to large, shared canvases. Porter then transformed these collective contributions into unified compositions.

Several of these works remain in her permanent collection, reflecting her belief in creativity as a shared human experience. She continues this collaborative tradition through paintings created with her nine grandchildren.

In 2026, Porter received Third Place in Abstract Painting at the Chianciano Biennale in Italy, marking an important milestone in her international artistic development.

An American-born Irish citizen through Ireland's Foreign Birth Registration process, Porter maintains a profound connection to her family's Irish heritage. Her artistic aspirations include exhibiting in Ireland and, ultimately, seeing one of her paintings become part of the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.

With lifelong roots in Miami and a second home in Tennessee, Porter's work reflects a life shaped by family, travel, entrepreneurship and an enduring commitment to creative exploration.

Her story is one of continual reinvention, but her artistic philosophy remains remarkably consistent: creativity flourishes through curiosity, experimentation, and the willingness to discover possibilities that were not apparent at the beginning.Myra Porter began painting in 2015, after running a successful Day Spa in South Miami for decades. She also studied law at the University of Miamin the early nineties, and passed the Florida Bar,

Myra considers herself an abstract expressionist, with a concentration on abstract landscapes. She enjoys the process of mark making and finding shapes through studying her marks, as if the painting speaks to her throughout its completion.

Landscapes are her main subject, specifically the views on her two-hundred-acre farm. Myra sometimes incorporates figures, or a suggestion of a figure in the landscape. Her pallets usually consist of greens, blues, yellows, and pops of white, pinks, and browns. She also favors oranges and reds.

Myra began studying for a Master of Fine Art at the University of Miami in the fall of 2018. Covid-19 put the brakes on that plan. By Spring 2020, classes were no longer be in-person. The remote- Zoom only instruction prompted Myra to opt out of the University MFA program. Instead, she turned a nine hundred square foot space in her Miami Day Spa into a large art studio. She hired a fellow M.F.A. student to teach her in person, as well as give her staff drawing and painting classes. A large collaboration canvas hung during staff meetings with marks made on it from each staff member. These Collaborations became the salon’s focal artwork and are now part of Myra’s permanent Art Collection.

The Collaborative work that came from the Covid-19 period expanded Myra’s painting process to include painting with other artists at her farm, as well as with her beloved grandchildren. Myra particularly loves to start a canvas with a group of artists or one of her grandchildren, and then study and finish the painting over time. She believes young children are the best artistic learning experience: watching them go at it without fear or ego, as they enjoy the “no rules” process she has taught them. One of Myra’s grandchildren, Joseph, has been painting regularly with her since he turned one. Her nickname for Joseph is Picasso.

Before her university study, Myra traveled abroad for painting retreats, where she first learned that she enjoys painting alongside other artists. Many of her paintings began with photographs from her travels in the U.S. and abroad, including South Africa, Ireland, Spain, and Amsterdam. However, Myra finds that her favorite images are those of her Tennessee farm property. Reference photos from inspiring artists: Van Gogh, Matisse, Cezanne, Gauguin, Picasso, and Pissarro have shaped her style as well.