Miguel Angel Perez, who goes by the artistic name of Michelangelo D'Yarumal, is a Colombian-American contemporary inspirational visual artist and poet who was born on September 21st in the room 3 of the Bristol Hotel in Yarumal, Antioquia, Colombia.

He was raised in Colombia where he studied elementary school, completed High School, business administration college studies, and radio & television broadcasting studies. Michelangelo has a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Social Communications and has been working in the Hispanic mass media - press, radio, TV and online - in Colombia and the United States for more than 22 years.

Since he was 6 year-old and because of the support of his family, especially from his mother, Michelangelo begun to find in painting a great joy due to his visual impairment.

According to his ophthalmologist, a possible solution for his visual recovery was a pair of glasses and an eye patch to cover his left eye. Michelangelo was not comfortable at all. However, the event that marked his live the most happened when he was a first grader in Girardota. His art teacher demanded Michelangelo and his classmates to draw a flower and paint its petals in black. Although he was in the front row and had been known all the time for being a disciplined student, he decided not to follow the teacher orders and painted his own version of a colorful flower. He received disciplinary actions and was deeply traumatized. Now he looks back and reflects: “I could not imagine a black flower, I had had enough darkness in my life having to live every day with my left eye covered and the other one with so little sight, so it made no sense to me to have to paint a black flower."

When he was 14 year-old, his ophthalmologist decided to stop his treatment because his strabismus was corrected, but his vision was still not good enough. Nobody else could do anything to improve his vision. Then, Michelangelo decided to put aside his eye patch that covered his left eye and develop his passion for painting.

His visual impairment impacted his artistic talent, so he decided not to draw or paint anything real but to create his own surrealistic and abstract expressions of his way of seeing the world. Since then, Michelangelo does not paint anything without including an eye somewhere in his paintings even though some might not be perceived at first glance.

Later on his artistic career, the summer of 2006 was another changing time in his artistic life. He traveled to Florence, Italy to study art and art history and visit its most notable historic sites. He was certified in Design and Painting after his studies at the institute "Accademia d'Arte AD'A di Firenze" and also Art History and Italian language at the Institute Michelangelo. During his stay, he made the decision to adopt "Michelangelo D'Yarumal" as his artistic name.

When he returned to Orlando, Florida, Michelangelo created his first full collection and gave foundation to his inspirational artistic proposal entitled: Anthropoartheism, a concept that promotes freedom and creativity to any kind of art (painting, poetry, theatrical, etc.), though one must not necessarily be someone gifted to be a part of it.

Anthropoartheism encourages art diversity without discrimination of culture, social status, sex, race or religious belief. This proposal invites human beings to discover art through the spiritual being inside of them in the midst of a world shaken by war, lack of integrity, full of evil and little appreciation for life. It is a path and option to re-inspire and let the natural talent with which each person was sent to earth with a mission and thus recognizes what we can contribute to others in their growth.

After a vision received through a dream, his artistic proposal changed completely for good. Michelangelo D'Yarumal decided once and for all to develop his artistic passion by following the inspired guidelines simply and discreetly. Currently Michelangelo lives in State College, Pennsylvania and alternates his career as an artist and poet with his full-time job as an online journalist and a Spanish staff writer for an international weather company.
Michelangelo D’Yarumal paints new works and writes poetry every day immersed and surrounded by his tendencies of expressionism, surrealism and abstract paintings which also are included in his second collection 2012-2013. At this time D'Yarumal is working in his third collection 2015-2016.