by Sheriff Bob Braudis
and Michael Cleverly

Michael Cleverly b. 1947
Windham College 1970 Studio Art

A New Englander by birth, an artist by trade, a skier by choice and a carpenter by necessity, Michael Cleverly left the mountains of his home State of Vermont for the considerably higher mountains of Colorado a few years after his graduation from college.

Settling in Aspen on a semi-stable basis in 1974 (with an occasional sojourn in Alaska and back in Vermont), he focused his energy on his painting, concentrating on portraits of Aspen residents — those wealthy enough to pay and those interesting enough to become his friends. In recent years, the subject matter of his art has expanded — and though he tries to avoid confining definitions, he says, if cornered, that he prefers to think of himself as a pornographer. In 2000, he began writing a column for The Aspen Times Weekly, which he continues to do.

In fact, during the 1970s, Cleverly painted at a studio in The Aspen Times building, which is just a few steps from the legendary Hotel Jerome Bar — a favored haunt of Hunter Thompson in those days. A man can spend only so many hours a day painting, and , with the Jerome as his break room, it was only a matter of time before Cleverly and Thompson recognized one another as kindred souls and became good friends.

Cleverly has been married twice. He has two daughters , two ex-wives and a grandson named Oliver. He lives near a fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado.