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Next door to Zeeland Street Market on Perkins Road is a small store-front where the beige curtains are always drawn. The nondescript building doesn’t have a sign welcoming visitors. If you are fortunate enough to be invited inside, you enter the dynamic studio space of painter Michael Crespo.

Born in New Orleans and raised in Baton Rouge, Crespo has spent a lifetime creating art and more than 30 years as an instructor at LSU. The son of a chemist father and a mother who was a USO singer, Crespo was exposed to literature, music and art as a child, but he didn’t pursue painting until his undergraduate years at LSU.

“I was not really interested in painting,” says Crespo. “Then, all of a sudden, I made a painting. And it was just like, ‘Oh! This is what I’m supposed to be doing!’ It was that kind of profound experience for me. And it shifted me completely.”

That shift to painting took Crespo from Baton Rouge to New York City where he earned his M.F.A. at Queens College. Crespo planned to stay in New York and raise his young family there, but when the opportunity to be a sabbatical replacement at University of Louisiana-Lafayette for artist Elmore Morgan presented itself, he made his way back to Louisiana and eventually home to his alma mater.

When it comes to his students, Crespo nurtures their talent and tries to prepare them for life after college. “I try to help them professionally,” he says. “There’s an aesthetic side of it; there’s the philosophical side of art. But there’s also a real practical side. ‘What do you do if you just want to be a painter?’ Artists are pretty creative about finding things to do. And as long as we can paint, we’re pretty happy.”

Crespo’s students also teach and inspire him. “When I come home from a day of teaching, I come [to the studio] fired up at the end of the day.”

Crespo’s current body of work—using oil on linen or panel—mostly features animals painted against a pitch-black backdrop. The beautiful, life-like subjects of his paintings sometimes appear serene, and other times foreboding. Each painting challenges observers to find their own meaning. Crespo’s The Gates of Dawn hangs in the Claiborne State Office Building in downtown Baton Rouge. This vivid 28-by-14-foot piece was commissioned through the state’s Percent For Art program.

Beside his students, Crespo also draws inspiration from the colorful residents and local businesses near his studio that sits between Zeeland Place and Hundred Oaks subdivisions. His wife, painter Libby Johnson, has an art school next door to his studio. They frequently interact with residents, some of them artists themselves, and support the neighborhood businesses.

“I call this area and this studio here my little corner of Paris,” Crespo says. “I’ve got the coffee shop across the street; I’ve got the great restaurant next door. I lead a real good painter’s life in Baton Rouge.”

His work is frequently shown in galleries in Houston and Memphis. His paintings are next on exhibit at Ann Connelly Fine Art in Baton Rouge this September. At age 59, Crespo shows no signs of slowing down.

“I’m just starting to figure a few things out about painting,” he says. “This is great! I’ve got 30 more years of painting to do. You never retire from it. You can't. You can't stop doing it."