Michael Donnelly

Michael has a growing reputation for intelligent, thoughtful and considered paintings. His work has been shown in recent exhibitions at the Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno (2005), Royal West of England Academy,Bristol (2005), The Schoolhouse Gallery, Penzance (2006).Also, this year he has had paintings shortlisted for the Celeste Art Prize and the John Moores 24 exhibition.

Based on the north Cornwall coast, with a studio in Perranporth, Michael gained an MA in Contemporary Visual Art from Falmouth College of Art in 2004, and is currently on the Tate St Ives/ Creative Skills graduate mentorship scheme.

These paintings are a selection of works that have been made in the last five years or so. They represent Michael's long standing interest in the form of still-life painting, and in this sense these paintings are a means to an end; a location for investigation and research, an arena where things and objects are set in relationship to each other in the highly defined and illusory space of the picture-plane.

Michael's current practice is intimately connected with the landscape and places of Cornwall, he will visit a place, often many times and collect things he finds there, in the studio these are arranged, assembled and formed in to tableaux that become the starting point for his visual enquiry. The making of a picture is undertaken with little or no expectations of what will emerge, deliberately paring down the content to keep the story of the picture always on the edge of collapse; setting the scene for narrative possibilities to emerge while drawing attention to the ways that visual narratives are constructed.