Mike is a figurative painter whose work meditates on mortality and life’s transience by focusing on the lives of historical figures and abstracts found images into original artworks using depth, colour, texture, and light.
Mike is a figurative painter whose work meditates on mortality and life’s transience by focusing on the lives of historical figures and abstracts found images into original artworks using depth, colour, texture, and light.
Mike Newton was born in Manchester in 1954.
He has a BSc (Hons.) Mathematics and a BA (Hons.) Fine Art.
In 2006 he was awarded an MA Fine Art Painting (Distinction) and a PhD in Fine Art Painting at Bath Spa University in 2013. His doctoral thesis was “Mark Making and Melancholia in Painting”.
He has had solo shows at Jerwood Gallery Café 2006, The Brick Lane Gallery London 2006, Nettie Horn, Vyner Street London 2007, Porthmeor Studios 2017 and been included in exhibitions at the Boundary Gallery London 2005 and 2007, Sherbourne House Dorset 2006, John Jones London 2007, Oriel Mostyn Gallery Llandudno 2007, bo-lee Gallery Bath 2010 and 2011, Salisbury Art Centre 2014, World of Glass, St Helens 2015, OXO Tower, London 2016, Wells Art Contemporary 2016, Porthmeor Studios 2017/18/19/22/23/24, Penwith Gallery, St Ives 2017/18, Yellow Door Gallery, Brooklyn New York 2018 and has had paintings selected for the Newlyn Society of Artists’ exhibitions in the Tremenheere Gallery in 2019/20/21/22/23/24.
He was awarded a regional prize in the National Open Art Competition in Chichester in 2010 and long listed for the John Moores Painting Prize in 2012.
In a world where we consume and discard images with little pause for thought, the slow process of painting is the perfect antidote. I like to paint historical figures as I am not interested in competing with the camera for contemporary portraiture. I enjoy working in series which gives me scope to learn about those who lived before us and understand how their work fits into the timeline of history. This could be interpreted as nostalgia, but I see it as a meditation on mortality and life’s transience. I get a bittersweet pleasure from looking back in this way.
I start by researching my chosen subject and then working from appropriated images I paint a number of experimental studies. I use these to create distance from the source image when I paint my version of the portrait. I like to focus on one particular line from their written work as I paint and aim to rebuild their aura, brushstroke by brushstroke, making them ‘alive’ again through depth, colour, texture and light.
Tel: 01736 795582 | Email: stivessociety@btconnect.com
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