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Mike Absalom
About
1940 UK. Irish Painter & Printmaker. Ex musician.
I paint because I am a coward and enjoy too well the familiar mask the world wears on an average working day. I know this mask covers an illusion that some have seen through, and I know it is my duty to see through it too, but I find it hard to get past the surface of the ingenious canvas on which it advertises itself. I think that human nature generally clings to safety and so do I. A world I can reach out and touch retains a certain maternal cosiness that is very difficult to relinquish. For 40 years I hung on to it like a cat up a poplar tree and I lived as a musician and turned illusion to my own advantage, and was loved. But of course, I never saw the real trick that is played upon us, nor how it was done. Then I hung up my harp, which was getting too heavy to carry anyway, and began to paint.
Painting, on the surface, is a lie and an illusion so blatant that it seems safe. It holds out an invitation to internal travellers to dip their toes into the great ocean of another reality without plunging head first into any heavy breakers on the first day and risking a premature annihilation. It seduces with the same velvet and two-faced approach as poetry. It seems innocuous, and indeed it is, if you look it square on, for then you will see nothing but pigment. Look sideways, however, with a little cunning, and if you need to you will catch a glimpse of something very much else. Terrible or lovely, I find it a far more congenial way of seeking truth than flagellation or icy austerities in a Himalayan mountain cave.
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- Website
- http://www.mikeabsalom.com
Mike Absalom
Painter Printmaker Musician Poet
In the early seventies Mike delighted highly amused crowds with his madcap satirical road shows and performances of songs from his legendary LPs "Hector and other Peccadillos" and "Mike Absalom". After 25 years spent in Canada and Paraguay as broadcaster, childrens entertainer, puppeteer, harpist, fiddler, Celtic band leader and poet, Mike toured the United Kingdom in 2002, sold up in the New World and returned to reconnect with his Welsh and Irish roots on this side of the Atlantic. He lives in County Mayo in the Republic of Ireland and during the past four years has set aside music to concentrate on his writing, printmaking and painting. His poetry has been published in the North and his essays have been broadcast on Lyric FM and published in the Quiet Quarter; an Anthology of New Irish Writing. His paintings, linocuts and dry points have been exhibited widely in Wales, England, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and China and several of his acrylics of Dublin have been purchased by the Office of Public Works. Mike is an accomplished and disturbing figurative painter, but is best known for his haunting Mayo landscapes and his unsettling architectural studies of streets and villages in Yorkshire, South Wales, Dublin and the West of Ireland. He was Artist in Residence at the Heinrich Bll Cottage, Achill Island in November 2004 and has recently been invited to exhibit at the 2007 Florence Biennale. This year he is also taking part in Cead in China, a Shanghai exhibition of the work of 100 Irish printmakers in that will subsequently tour China. He holds an MA in Oriental Studies (Islamic Art and Culture) from the University of Oxford and has studied in Paraguay, Sweden and Iran.
Awards/Scholarships:
Abbot Exhibition to St Catherines College, Oxford
Canada Council Scholarships (2) to pursue studies in Asuncion, Paraguay
Government of British Columbia (Canada) Artist in Residence Grants (13)
CCTE Grant to lecture in Calgary (Alberta)
Artist in Residence at Heinrich Bll Cottage, Achill Island, County Mayo
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Art
Events & Exhibitions
Events
Future Shows: Upcoming Exhibitions 2007: Cead in China (February-May) Shanghai, Clotworthy Arts Centre, Antrim (March), Dame Street Gallery, Dublin (April), Dean Crowe Theatre Gallery, Athlone (May), Island Arts Centre, Lisburn (June), Ennis Art Gallery (June), Ballina Arts Centre (October), View Two Gallery, Liverpool (October/November), Old Market House, Dungarvan (Nov/Dec.), Florence Biennale (December). Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards (March 2008).
