Michael Reafsnyder was born in Orange, California. In 1996 he obtained his MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Critics have been calling his work “happy” and “joyful” for nearly twenty years. “Reafsnyder […] has already distinguished himself among a generation of L.A.-based artists who have begun to put happiness back into painting,” wrote David Pagel in 1998. The artist himself has said that he admires the Abstract Expressionists but not their macho “angst.” “ "I found myself liking that type of painting, knowing I'm not a macho man myself (and wondered) what I could do next," he told the Las Vegas Sun during a retrospective of his work at the Las Vegas Art Museum in 2005. Color, he said, was part of the solution. “[C]olor is so pleasurable.”

His work has been collected by museums and institutions across the U.S., including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles California; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota.