Michael Cooper is starting his third decade of painting large-scale custom murals. Since starting Murals & More LLC in 1990, he has designed wall murals ranging from small interior residential projects to enormous hotel interiors to massive exterior highway projects. Also an accomplished faux painter, he has transformed many surfaces into fabulous brick, intricate marble and classic Italian Plaster. He is internationally renowned for his attention to detail and his ability to create realistic and whimsical trompe l'oeil murals. People have simply been amazed at discovering what they thought was a series of wrought iron balconies or a clumsily placed ladder was actually a flat painted surface. Cooper founded Murals & More LLC after painting murals as a hobby for nearly his entire life. His first association with a mural was actually in the first grade, (too many years ago!) where his winning drawings were incorporated into a large tile mural, which still exists today. Even though his specialty is large-scale murals and decorative finishes, Michael has also provided his clients with painted furniture, ceiling murals, floor cloths, backdrops, sports murals and many specialty items.

His most recent commercial projects include providing custom and Italian Venetian Plaster finishes for the interior of the Hyatt Hotel in Palm Springs, California, immediately after painting a large exterior mural for an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (The Scott Family), the first time they had EVER had an exterior painted wall mural for this popular and well-received show. He has painted bridge supports for the Flatrock Heritage Foundation, featuring numerous climbing zoo animals; an 80' mural on the back wall of a Bumper Car Pavilion in City Park, New Orleans; the first work of public art for downtown Dickson, Tennessee, on a 40' x 80' exterior brick wall; a 15' x 300' trompe l'oeil wall for Nashville's Bicentennial Mall; a large children's mural at the Second Presbyterian Church; two large interior murals for the Franklin Family YMCA; two large murals for the Bellevue family YMCA, completed right after painting faux finishes and trompe l'oeil stone on over 225,000 square feet (over a mile and a half) of highway retaining and parapet walls in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. And in 2010 he is scheduled to paint two large murals at a YMCA in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as well as a mural for the side of a large theatre in Lebanon, TN. Whew! And that's not even mentioning his residential projects! In order to share his over 20 years of experience as a professional mural artist, Michael (and Mickie!) has also been teaching classes in the art and business of mural painting in their large Franklin studio, as well as seminars throughout the country. He has authored an instructional DVD on "How to Paint Murals", he has his own line of custom mural brushes (the Michael Cooper Signature Series), as well as various other custom tools.

He is a member of the Artist's Advisory Council and the Community Relations Board for the Frist Center of the Visual Arts, a teacher with the TPAC ArtSmart Program, an avid racquetball player, and, in his spare time, Mike plays a decent 12 string guitar and a mean djembe.

And if it weren't for his wife, Mickie, he wouldn't be here at all!