Art came naturally to Michael Ehle, 46

Michael Joseph Ehle never went to art school. The son of a Salinas, Calif., painting contractor, Ehle started painting and drawing as a child. By the time he moved to Seattle in 1973, at age 20, he'd been making art for years. His one plunge into higher education was a year spent at a California junior college.

Yet Mr. Ehle always considered himself an artist. And he always made art, even when he had to pay the rent in his modest Capitol Hill apartment by washing dishes in restaurants. But his hard work and love affair with art eventually won him critical acclaim. In the mid-1980s, the local art world started taking notice. By 1985 he was showing his art at the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle and in various Portland galleries.

In the next 15 years he would become one of the region's best known artists. His work was collected by Microsoft, Safeco, the Tacoma Art Museum and the University of Washington Medical Center, among others. His stylized, dramatic figurative paintings became closely associated with the Seattle Men's Chorus. He was commissioned by the chorus to create paintings for its 1987-88 and 1992-93 seasons.

Mr. Ehle, 46, died Dec. 27 of complications related to AIDS. A service was held Monday. Memorial contributions may be made in his name to the Bailey-Boushay House, 2720 E. Madison St., Seattle, 98112. His family also is accepting donations for a grave marker to be decorated with images from his work. Donations may be mailed to his sister Mary at 1300 University St., #7C, Seattle, WA 98101. Besides Mary, survivors include sisters Linda, of San Jose, Calif., and Deborah, of Colorado Springs, Colo.; niece Michelle, of Seattle; and parents Caryol and Gertrude, of Honolulu.

In the last years of his life, as AIDS ravaged his health, Mr. Ehle's paintings - which had always been explorations of the human spirit and the drama of life and death - took on a deeply introspective, philosophical tone. Earlier in his career Mr. Ehle depicted scenes from Greek mythology and the Bible. But in more recent paintings the subject was often a man alone, naked or nearly naked, floating in water or waiting calmly as some physical danger threatened him.

Sometimes flames leapt around the man. Sometimes the man seemed to be surrendering himself as an offering in a religious ritual of unspecified meaning. Mr. Ehle's unusual style, which made his paintings resemble Byzantine icons or medieval stained-glass windows, gave them an added spirituality. Because of his work's subject matter, he is the Northwest visual artist most closely associated with the AIDS epidemic.

Despite his lack of formal education, Mr. Ehle was remarkably well-read. Greg Kucera said that Mr. Ehle often quoted poetry and literature, and that he was extremely knowledgeable about music, from opera to rock, from chamber music to show tunes.

He was also very spiritual. "He was really interested in a life of religion in the broad, universal sense," said Kucera. "He was interested in a lot of religions, not just one. He would give up things for Lent, even though he wasn't really Catholic, and it was important to him to be a good and an honest person. Those sorts of things were very meaningful to him."

Kucera added that Mr. Ehle took great pride in supporting himself on his art, even though, despite his talent and the popularity of his work, income from his paintings was never enough to afford him anything beyond a materially frugal lifestyle. He lived in the same small apartment for 20 years.

Though his paintings were always serious in tone, even ominous in his last years, the works Mr. Ehle created for the Seattle Men's Chorus were more light-hearted. He created a total of six paintings for the chorus, since each season required three posters. Many have become collector's items.

"Michael had a unique gift for capturing the spirit of our group," said Paul Bauer, the chorus's marketing director. "He did paintings for our homage to Cole Porter and our concert with Diane Schuur that were joyful. They were perfect. He had a great talent."