Michael
Flahault

Michael Flahault is a Canadian painter based in Kingston, Ontario. Born in Montreal, he grew up in Paris and London, where regular exposure to major museums and galleries, together with formal and extracurricular art instruction, established a lifelong engagement with painting.

During the 1990s, as a member of the American Society of Aviation Artists, Flahault studied with artists including Keith Ferris and received several awards for his aviation work, including Best of Show at the 1999 SimuFlite/Flying Magazine Horizons of Flight exhibition in Fort Worth, Texas. In the early 2000s, his watercolours were represented through Art for Life galleries in New Jersey and New York.

During his time with the American Society of Aviation Artists, Flahault became familiar with artist programs associated with several branches of the United States military. Drawing on those examples, he wrote a proposal for a comparable Canadian program. General Maurice Baril, then Chief of the Defence Staff, submitted the proposal, which was accepted and became the Canadian Forces Artists Program (CFAP). Flahault later served as the artist representative on the program’s Selection Advisory Committee.

In 2003 and 2004, the Canada Aviation Museum commissioned four of his watercolours for inclusion in its aircraft displays.

In recent years, Flahault has increasingly concentrated on oil painting, particularly figurative and representational work exploring memory, absence, emotional distance, and the private experiences carried within ordinary lives. His work has been shown in group exhibitions in the Kingston region, and in 2026 he was invited to present his first solo exhibition at MERA, followed by an invitation for a second solo exhibition in 2027.

Alongside his studio practice, Flahault has pursued a career developing flight-simulation software.