Mike’s Artistic Journey

(Childhood) I’ve drawn from my earliest memories. My Mom told me my kindergarten teachers said I drew in “3D.” I still don’t know what this means, but I imagine it refers to an “illusionistic” quality. Like most children who draw, my purpose wasn’t to be creative or artistic, but to build visual aids for my active imagination. To make “real” a world I wanted to see. That world was populated with Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman and the Mummy. I was also interested in and drew dinosaurs. I built model kits of my favorite monsters. My Dad taught me how to mix colors to paint these plastic monsters. He showed me how to make grey from black and white Testors enamel model paint. Depicting this subject matter made me a child artist.
(1973-1977) I was the cartoonist for my high school newspaper. I kept a sketchbook and drew pictures from my imagination with pencils and ink. I didn’t have exposure to high art, and didn’t care/know much about art except as an activity. My artistic influences included a racy comic book called Heavy Metal, particularly one artist who went under the name of Moebius. Also, I liked rock music album covers; the work of Roger Dean and Hipgnosis stood out in my fragile teenage mind as above the rest. I had two influential high school art teachers, Ms. Gilbert (sophomore year) and Ms. Patrick (junior and senior years). These teachers encouraged me to apply to art school. I was accepted to V.C.U. in Richmond, VA and started there as a freshman.

(1977-1981) V.C.U. My early college art influences were the same as in high school. My first paintings were not of the human figure or still life, but scenes from my imagination. I made somewhat illustrative surreal oil paintings of dirigibles flying over beaches and mooring to lighthouses. There were also depictions of barns, shacks, flags and crates and boxes wrapped in flags. This was my first series of paintings related by subject matter. I didn’t have an art historical point of reference. As in childhood, I wanted to make pictures of a world I wanted to see.

(1981-1987) Worked on my own. I was introduced to dada and surrealism, noticing dada collage resembled punk rock album covers and flyers. I started making collages from print media and paintings in oil and acrylic paint from imagination. Influences included the illustrative surrealists like Giorgio de Chirico, Rene Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst and Dorathea Tanning, conceptualist dada oddballs like Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. Also print media inspired pop artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichenstein and James Rosenquist were influential and pretty much in that order.

(1987-1993) The Corcoran in Washington, D.C. I went to the Corcoran already making my own style of realistic paintings from my collages. Influences of that time were pretty much the same as before. I didn’t get much support from my teachers. The idea in the 1980s was “painting is dead,” and “representation is wrong” or at least “politically incorrect.” I still wanted to paint even if it was passe’, so I started making abstract paintings. They don’t bother people as much. The Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rothko and Ad Rhinehart were (and are) my favorites. At the same time I was introduced to the work of the “Old Masters” who used layers of transparent glazes to create their illusionistic windows on their worlds. I started to combine the two, non-objective abstraction with illusionistic 3D technique, and at least redeemed myself and painting to the faculty.
In my senior year I was chosen to do a semester of independent study at The A.I.C.A. Studio School in N.Y.C. I was given a studio in Tribeca and all I had to do was paint, go to suggested art shows and keep a journal of my experiences/observations. Even though painting was “dead” in N.Y.C. as well, I saw much fantastic painting in the SoHo galleries. I continued making the illusionistic/abstract hybrid, eventually hitting on the painting style I use today. Influences included (and still include) Gerhardt Richter and Sigmar Polk.

(1993-1999) The years in Philly after The Corcoran started by having my own studios and continuing the largish abstract paintings I started making at The Corcoran. Now I was on my own artistically speaking, without the nurturing and dictated purpose school provides. I was in search of something truly my own, art deserving of my abilities, intellect and artistic journey. I discovered a small coffeehouse in my South Philly neighborhood called “The Beat House.” I started doing the monochrome paintings of coffee cups as an installation piece. This was the first representational painting I had done in years.
The years in Philly were also a time of invention and experiments that often led nowhere. I continued making collages, but now I would get them enlarged at the copy store, mount them on wood and enhance them with acrylic paint. I tried to make glazed oil paintings by pouring thin mixtures to tinted dammar varnish in layers over pieces of old real estate signs.
I had several art-related jobs. I worked in an art supply store, where I learned how many kinds of art supplies there are and how few are really needed. I had a job as a graphic artist in a t-shirt printing factory bootlegging Grateful Dead shirts and shipping them all over America. (Jerry Garcia died during this period and the G.D. t-shirt gravy train came to a screeching halt.) I worked as a graphic artist in a large sign factory designing real estate signs on computer. It was a fully functioning art factory that happened to produce mundane products. The sign factory was good for art materials to paint on and with and other materials in which to experiment. The toxins from the factory made me ill enough to leave that job. That is when my art and my life got better. I started to paint from my imagination again and create that world I wanted to see, not caring what anyone else had to say about it.

(1999-2006) the glorious present. After shedding most and embracing some of my Corcoran indoctrination, these days I made oil paintings of monochrome landscapes populated with passive, semi-nude “Devauxesque” figures. The figures add psychological content, evoking advertising imagery, album covers, and punk rock. These transverse urban wastelands, dark and heavy or broken prairie, bright and bleak. Old machines and cars litter the horizon. The subject matter encompasses a wide range of shadows from light sources and their reflections, receding into the atmospheric condition. It’s all created out of paint on canvas or paper. An alchemy of Gepetto. A private surrogate reality out of liquid. Liquid puppets.