At Tucson Gallery, we believe that art has the power to capture not just images — but emotions, memories, and the very soul of a place.
Few artists embody this more than Mike Berren, whose digital streetscapes are colorful tributes to Tucson’s most beloved landmarks and hidden gems.
Using his masterful eye for detail, Mike recreates iconic theaters, historic neighborhoods, charming coffee shops, and bustling downtown streets — pixel by pixel — preserving the spirit of Tucson even as the city continues to evolve.
The Art of Digital Streetscapes
Mike’s streetscapes are more than just paintings. They are carefully constructed mosaics, built from hundreds of individually photographed and digitally hand-painted elements. Each building, each sign, and each slice of sidewalk is crafted with care, combining into vivid portraits of Tucson’s neighborhoods and culture.
What started during the isolation of the COVID-19 lockdown — as a way to support local businesses and keep a sense of community alive — has grown into a full artistic movement, capturing the places that mean the most to Tucsonans.
Explore familiar locations like:
- The historic Hotel Congress
- The vibrant Fourth Avenue District
- Barrio Viejo’s colorful architecture
- Neighborhood diners, coffee shops, and churches
— all brought together into vibrant samplers that feel alive with local spirit.
A Journey From Science to Art
Mike’s path to becoming an artist was as unique as his work.
A former research psychologist and university instructor, Mike always had a gift for helping people visualize complex ideas. Over time, that gift evolved into a love for visual storytelling through art.
Inspired by travels to Santa Fe and fueled by a desire to create during quiet evenings, Mike found his true voice not by mimicking others, but by forging his own distinctive style.
His digital paintings reflect both technical skill and a deep emotional connection to the city he now calls home.
More Than Art — A Conversation with Tucson
Every streetscape Mike creates is a living conversation between Tucson’s past and present.
Some pieces celebrate thriving businesses and familiar gathering places. Others spark deeper emotions, as residents share memories of places lost to time. Praise and debate alike have followed his work — proof that his art matters to the people it portrays.
Mike embraces it all, knowing that true art doesn’t just capture a building — it captures a story, a feeling, and a community.
Explore Mike’s Artwork
Discover the full range of Mike Berren’s original digital paintings, prints, and Tucson streetscapes available at thetucsongallery.com/artists/mike-berren/.
Bring a piece of Tucson history — pixel by pixel — into your home.
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🔔 Subscribe to our podcast on SoundCloud and YouTube to hear the inspiring stories behind the art.
❤️ Support local artists — support Tucson.
Transcript
Tom Heath
Welcome back to another episode of Meet the Artist. It’s a production of the Tucson Gallery, which is located in downtown Tucson. 300 East Congress, or right across the street from Hotel Congress. We’re in the same block as the Rialto Theater, and, we have over 35 artists represented in the gallery, and occasionally we get them to come in and showcase their their talent on the show.
Tom Heath
And we we talk with them, asking questions. You can get all the details on the, Tucson gallery.com website. There’s a past episodes as well as bios of all 35 artists. Available. And today we are joined by Mike Barrett. Mike, welcome.
Mike Berren
Thank you. Excited me excited. I’m excited. Nervous and excited.
Tom Heath
Nervous. And don’t be nervous. This this. There’s only like three people that watch. And so we’re good. We’re good. Yeah. Mike, you came to us. My business partner, Tony Ray had, He had seen your work and was trying to get Ahold of you. And then you happened to come into the gallery for a tour. We were doing, and you said, oh, here’s some work that I’m doing.
Tom Heath
And I showed it to Tony Ray, and he’s like, I’ve been trying to get this guy. I mean, so you’re really. You’re famous.
Mike Berren
It’s really. It was such a coincidence at that. And I’ll tell you a few more of the coincidences with the gallery, but, it really started with a real estate agent who had sold a condo that my wife and I had owned. And, ever since it sold out, we kind of get together occasionally, and, I’ll bring her paintings as I do them, which was bring in our office.
Mike Berren
And then at Thanksgiving, we’d go to her office and she’d hand out food items or whatever. And one day I was there and she said, hey, there’s this tour going on that downtown you might be interested in. And I just had finished a painting downtown, gave a tour, and she said, there’s a tour guide and it’s I will give him one, two and had no idea.
Tom Heath
I.
Mike Berren
Was the tour. I know, I know, and.
Tom Heath
I still have that. Yeah. So yeah, I was very excited. Excited to get that. And you, your work is, is a little bit interesting. We’ve got a few different pieces in the gallery because you’ve got some more traditional, paintings. Right. But a lot of what is very popular right now are your streetscapes, you know, which those are very uniquely done.
Tom Heath
What’s the process for that?
Mike Berren
There is there’s I’ll tell you the process, but I’ll also tell the history because again, it really is phenomenal history of those. So I’ve previously been doing individual buildings or even, Native American pueblos or whatever. And as Covid started, there’s a the eclectic cafe on the northeast side of town. I’d had paintings there for years, and like all the other restaurants in town, they were hurting staff wasn’t, you know, able to work or whatever.
Mike Berren
So I said, you know what? Why don’t we try something? I’ll do a painting of, the eclectic along with a couple other cafes, and maybe people will buy it. And we just put that into a tip jar. And I started posting on the various Facebook pages, you know, if you’re from Tucson, if, Tucson community, etc. and I post, here’s what this thing might look like.
Mike Berren
And lo and behold, people started saying, oh, you know, include such and such. But Frank’s restaurant, here and there’s other one, and I do it and I post it again and partially I think people like the art, but partially other people just like me were at home. They weren’t getting out. And so I’d spend the day painting.
Mike Berren
And the next day people were commenting and getting really excited about it. And it sold a ton of them. Oh, good. And partially for the art, but partial. I think people were just interested in wanting to help out. The eclectic guy was the very first street art scape I had done.
Tom Heath
So define what the street scape is. We, I mean, you can see it on on the Tucson Gallery’s website. We’ll have things on our Facebook page which kind of walk them through it.
Mike Berren
A few different types. So the, the one that we’re talking about, the downtown would be a location okay. So it would be all the various potential. So I can’t include everything. But I think the title of that one was Arts and Entertainment Downtown. And I always put parenthetically a sampler. Okay. And it would be that others might be a theme or it’s not going to be one location, but it’d be Mexican restaurants.
Tom Heath
Or diners.
Mike Berren
Or diners or whatever it happened to be. And not as much now. But at the beginning, when I was doing these, can I go on Facebook in the morning and 2 or 3 different pages and, and people will almost, they would wake up in the morning with me and they’d start commenting. And I was like the opposite, you know, Bob Ross.
Mike Berren
Yeah. Right. So I was the opposite of Bob Ross, where I’d put something on there and people try to make comments, oh, I don’t like that Bush or do this or change that, or make sure you include such and such restaurant.
Tom Heath
So and then so the streetscapes what it looks like then is it’s, it’s one painting there like the arts and the downtown arts and entertainment, the parenthetical sampler. It’s got like the Fox Theater, the Rialto Theater, hotel Congress, all the, the, the entertainment spots. And you got the images sort of aligned, like they’re all.
Mike Berren
So I basically build it like a puzzle. So I’ll start off at, let’s say Tokyo Hotel Congress. So I’ll probably take 15 or 20 photographs together, one got to get the same shading. If something on the north side of the street or the south side of the street, right. So I want to get and then I’ll start painting.
Tom Heath
As soon I get the same shading for each.
Mike Berren
Bill for each building.
Tom Heath
Okay. So you’ve got to have every different angle, every different times of day for each building.
Mike Berren
So I’m going to try and generally my favorite time is when it’s cloudy because I don’t have to worry about shout. It’s at all. So now I have a photograph of Hotel Congress and I’ll work on that independently. Do another photograph of any other art place, whether it’s, I mean, the gallery or other sorts of places, and I’ll paint each one individually.
Mike Berren
And when I say paint it, I everything’s digital. Right? So I’m doing it on my laptop. And, you know, people here at digital Art, you know, oh, you just push a button, you’re like, I, you say me downtown, right? And each one my each building, whether it’s, the proper shops or hotel Congress, whatever I’m doing, probably the bigger ones will probably take me anywhere between 70 and 100 hours to do one building.
Tom Heath
One.
Mike Berren
Building, one building, and then I’ll put them back together again in a puzzle. So you could take easily a few hundred hours.
Tom Heath
So the end result, you start with a photograph.
Mike Berren
I start with a photograph of.
Tom Heath
The building, then you digitally paint.
Mike Berren
It and I digitally paint it. And almost like building blocks where I might take a brush and paint a little bit. But part of it, if it’s a whole wall, I can just kind of take a block and I’ll put that block in there, okay. And then I’ll put a door in there.
Tom Heath
So the end result it’s, it’s I, it’s hard to explain. It’s not cartoonish but it’s, it’s not quite reality. It’s it’s definitely a highly colorized and.
Mike Berren
Highly colorized and very simplistic lines. Yeah. Certainly you have to change the shapes or size of some time. So, Fox theaters, I had on that one. It’s the sides of the building. Can’t be there. I’ve got to sure everything. Once I do the 10 or 15 buildings, then it’s a matter of going where I want to put this, almost like it’s a puzzle.
Mike Berren
Yeah, yeah. Where do you want to put this one? Where do you want to put this one? And what is the sidewalk going to look like. What is the street going to look like. And try and balance things.
Tom Heath
So I hope if you’re listening or watching, if you head over to, the Tucson Galleries website design gallery.com and look up mike’s page, you’ll see the street Cape streetscapes that we’re talking about, a lot of different things. There’s Fourth Avenue, there’s downtown, you’ve got one that’s just, missions and churches. Coffee shops. I think you said.
Mike Berren
Yeah. And I just finished my most recent one is, so I’ve got coffee or I have diners, and I just finished one on coffee and tea. Places that. It’s the first one I’ve done. It’s kind of early, early in the morning. So the sun is coming up.
Tom Heath
It’s kind of fun to see all the iconic features, all the accounting names in one, one place, like. Oh, okay, I know all those places. And just to see them on one by one page.
Mike Berren
And what’s strange is this, again, I’m sort of labeling them that is a sampler. And then also circo whatever. Because every time I finish one, two years later.
Tom Heath
There’s a new one or it once changed.
Mike Berren
Went out of business or, you know, the Mexican restaurants. I think 3 or 4 of them are gone since I did it. So here what it was, it was there.
Tom Heath
It was it was there. And one now, you know, there’s someone else there. So you could do a newer one.
Mike Berren
Yeah. We’re taking us again, less so now because we all have stuff to do. But during Covid we’re taking so personal. Yeah, you can imagine what I did. Sam Hughes neighborhood. And if you’re familiar with Sam Hughes neighborhood, there’s some traditions there and long term kind of people. And at one point, yeah, it’s kind of sit there, I look at things and I think it’s Third Street here at second or third.
Mike Berren
I think it’s Third Street that leads into the university has these large large palm trees.
Tom Heath
Yeah. I know you’re talking about.
Mike Berren
Yeah I was and so I, I included a palm tree and started getting comments about those are not natural to Sam Hughes neighborhood. That and the stories. Then people started sharing the stories about a gas station in the 1950s or 60s that was selling seeds. And I found it fascinating to me. It was just a piece of art.
Tom Heath
Sure.
Mike Berren
And people are getting so involved in what should or shouldn’t be involved in that.
Tom Heath
So so let’s take a step back. This is I mean, this is what you’re producing now. Have you indeed did you just start becoming artistic during Covid or is this a passion of yours? For years.
Mike Berren
I think I’ve always been pretty visual. Okay. My career was was not art. It’s always. I’ve been artistic.
Tom Heath
What was your career?
Mike Berren
I’m a research psychologist, so my PhD is in psychology. Okay. And I, worked in public mental health system, taught at the university. But even things like, I titled psychological testing or shot kind of stuff and statistics at the university at Pima. And even though there are people that probably knew the content better than I did, I had an ability to somehow help people visualize statistical problems or issues.
Mike Berren
So yeah, even though it was a totally different universe, I’ve had the ability to do lots of presentations, and if I prepare for them, it’s supposed to this I was able to help people understand dynamic some things that they can kind of see.
Tom Heath
As opposed to this. You’re doing great. See, you got it. If you’re listening, he’s got notes written out here. He’s got photographs. He’s your ear. You’re like, you’ve researched this and we need you know, we’re going to talk about it okay I am. So at what point then did did this artistic drive really start to take hold?
Mike Berren
Just looking for hobbies to some extent. And, my wife and I at the time lived in Lubbock, Texas when I started doing some art stuff and we used to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico and, oh, gee, I really love some of the art there. And I started just modeling some of the art and just it would be just something to do on the weekend or in evenings.
Mike Berren
If I didn’t want to work, I could do, some painting and pretty much copied other people’s things. Okay. Are you familiar with local artist Chris Rubini.
Tom Heath
And definitely know the name? Yeah, yeah.
Mike Berren
Okay. Chris is, does a lot of pottery and plates and things and really well known. And I was in a gallery she had years and years ago and she was. Look at my stuff, too. You know, I like a lot of your stuff, but you know what? You’re you’re not doing you right. You’re doing neat, or you’re doing this person, you do somebody else just do your stuff.
Mike Berren
And so I’ve tried to stick with that. And that’s why I started doing more of the buildings and things that and then the street scenes that I did are just mine. Occasional fall back and borrow with somebody else might do. I can try really hard. Just do my stuff.
Tom Heath
You have some that look like they’re like acrylic. Do you do acrylic painting and things or is it all photographs and.
Mike Berren
Or actually every. I used to do acrylic. That’s probably why the things look like acrylic. Nothing on the website or they get the you have is acrylic. Everything is digitally painted.
Tom Heath
So like the you’ve got the, the main market that’s, that’s, that’s a photograph and digitally done.
Mike Berren
So it’s a photograph. And then I will go back in and because when I, you know, again people think sometime digitally, okay, I’m going to push a button.
Tom Heath
Right, right.
Mike Berren
And what I, what I’ve done, I can blow up the, the picture a large size so I can get into the detail, that you couldn’t do if you were painting right on a canvas with a brush, but, nothing that I have currently is painted with acrylics or oil is all painted digitally. And sometimes people ask me, I, someone wrote me the other day and it has to do.
Mike Berren
I have limited editions or.
Tom Heath
The.
Mike Berren
First issue, nothing I have is is is a hard copy of an original, everything digitally painted until I print it.
Tom Heath
Well, it’s interesting because you do go in like each pixel you go in.
Mike Berren
And so I can go into change, fix.
Tom Heath
Every hours to do a single.
Mike Berren
Building. And some are quicker, but some can take a long, long time.
Tom Heath
And I know you brought in. This will be really good radio. But you brought in a photo, which I thought was fun. You’ve got the Barrio Viejo. The. It’s the market that I was talking about. And you got one version. Then you also have a more pixel sized, paint painted version.
Mike Berren
This one was, this was at the time when, again, Covid was real heavy and I was doing not street scenes, but individual buildings. And what I would do is take whether was the corner market or a rundown building and redo it. So what might this look like? Not that it’s better or worse, but what might have look like.
Mike Berren
So on the South Main Market, I did that and I posted when I was finally done with the whole thing. The original of what? The photograph, what I took, what does it look like? And then my painting. And it’s telling you earlier that. So I have a large version of this hanging in my office to remind me that one person writes in and says that this is awful.
Mike Berren
Leave it alone. You shouldn’t be messing with, historical things. We don’t like what you’re doing, blah blah blah. Then another person writes in and says that this building and store belonged to my dad’s grandfather. Back in the day, my dad lived in the building, grew up, I think your look is beautiful. And bring an old, worn building, a modern look, and to see it open and used again and it’s awesome or whatever else.
Mike Berren
And I saw I use it’s I know that some people don’t like what I do and many people really like it. And one way comments. But to me it sounded interesting how just a paint. Just a painting.
Tom Heath
Yeah, well, you get it out into the world and you just. No, no, no, what’s what’s going to happen? Well, Mike, I appreciate your time today. Thanks for sharing the story. If you want to learn more about Mike, you can head over to the, Tucson Gallery’s website. It’s, Tucson gallery.com on there. You’ll have, a list of, artists, and there’s podcasts and stories and a lot of photography as well as artwork available.
Tom Heath
There’s also a calendar of events, because sometimes the artists are in the gallery to to say hi and meet their adoring fans or some of their maybe angry detractors coming into, you don’t know with Mike, he’s he’s a pop star. He’s a pop star. But, Mike, I really appreciate your time today.
Mike Berren
Well, I appreciate my love coming here. Thanks, Tom.
Tom Heath
Thank you.
Mike Berren
Perfect tickets. You know, worthy. But I shouldn’t mention their upcoming events. It got, Sheila and then death.