Biography

Industry / Having been forced to leave Manchester Art School - when my local authority Barrow-in-Furness refused any grant money - I worked in heavy industry for a couple of years. First in the Shipyard with coppersmiths on three nuclear submarines, the Repulse, the Resolution, and the Revenge. I also worked in the Steelworks (Hoop Works) as a Tongsman pulling white hot billets of steel from the furnace and squeezing them through rollers into 20 foot lengths, different shapes used for various functions.

Later in London, as well as teaching, I had my own building company Pharaoh Construction. I also made handmade snooker cues. Many, if not all, of these activities have informed my art practice and the processes I apply to my work.

Academic / Following a Foundation Course at Manchester Polytechnic, Michael attended Ravensbourne College of Art gaining First Class Honours in Fine Art Painting. Following that, two years postgraduate at the Slade School of Art gaining a Higher National Diploma in Fine Art Painting. He was then appointed Junior Fellow in Fine Art Painting at Cardiff School of Art. After that spending time as visiting lecturer at Central School of Art (Sculpture), tutor at Lina Garnard Foundation Course (Painting), then visiting Senior Lecturer at Camberwell School of Art (Painting and Photography). He then taught photography and furniture restoration at Southwark Institute and was shortlisted for residency at Gonville and Cais College Cambridge. After that working at South Thames College teaching drawing, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.

Michael has had exhibitions at Oriel Gallery Cardiff, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, White Space London, Leeds City Gallery, Talbot Rice and Di Rollo galleries Edinburgh, John Moores Liverpool, Pall Mall Deposit, Barbican Centre, Royal Academy and 223 Gallery London. Michael has works included in collections held by the Weisman Foundation LA and the Science Museum London.

Artists' Statement / A lot of my work includes references to my own very early fragments of sensation – via colour, pattern, surface, material and touch.

There can be a lot of details, symbols and layers in the painting - principal thrust in ‘Moments’ is me tracing a personal picturing of the glory, mystery and majesty of organic structures, developing and becoming molecules, acids, syrups and general sticky stuff - teeming, heaving and connecting in cascades of succulent chance. Movements which dictate the physical, metabolic and atomic nature of our flesh and emotions. Once this this parcel of complexities have come together they must then grow and search for a purpose.

Referencing bits of personal history, I have included a few playing cards with an image of Blackpool Tower on, and Blackpool is there in my nostalgic memory as a symbol of people coming together with a vigorous spirit. A place where the crowds for the most part share a common particular sense of purpose as they swell and separate, glare and fuse, and create energy, which at its best illuminates more than just the sky and promenade and with its chemistry and intoxication.

This spirit mirrors the rhythms of our pageant which must flicker and fade and tire but always returns with optimism and expectation as our conjoined cells and elements run their destiny, searching for a resolution, one which is probably never reached - except in moments of love and tender creation - because their destiny is just to be.

My interest in the universe and what we are made of has  directed me towards a variety of mediums including film, printmaking, lightboxes and large canvases. Scale has been important, large and small, depending on the statement or inquiry I am involved in. Employing a style that has been called organic abstraction in the R.A. catalogue canvases are heavily worked and the the grand narratives are woven into the gestures, symbols and characters inhabiting the densely populated surfaces.