MICHAEL CLARK R.G.I., R.S.W., P.A.I.

Born 1959 in Ayr, Michael studied at the Edinburgh College of Art from 1979-83.  After graduating, his love of film led to joining the BBC in Glasgow, followed by a move to London as a freelance art director in 1989.  Michael then returned to painting, holding his first solo exhibition in 1996 with Sally Hunter Fine Art in Knightsbridge. He returned to Ayrshire in 1999.
Referring to the influences of his pictures, Michael talks of how “My enduring relationship with France has influenced my subject matter since my first visit to Paris as a student in 1980.  In my studio paintings, I can still escape from the Scottish winter to the warmth of France”.  His atmospheric figurative scenes, still life and landscapes of France, Italy and Scotland evidences this highly acclaimed artist’s sensitive but vibrant palette and evocation of place in simplified forms.  His atmospheric paintings have an abstract quality as well as recalling a scene fleetingly glimpsed, a person passed or met, a place visited or lived.  His rich painterly surfaces and observant tones often breathe with the heat and light of summer, with his flattened shapes bringing into focus the rudimental in our surroundings and memories. 
Michael has won many awards from public exhibitions including the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, the Paisley Art Institute and the Sunday Times/Singer Friedlander Watercolour Prize.  He is a member of both the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour and the Paisley Art Institute.  In 2023 he was elected a member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of The Fine Arts.