About
Mike Fenton

About Mike Fenton

For a more in-depth look at my work please see my website: www.gallerymikefenton.co.uk

My work comprises acrylic or watercolour paintings done on canvas or paper. It is colourful and tranquil and can suggest natural forms and structures, or out–of–focus photographs.

My primary interests are with colour and pattern; and by utilising a variety of techniques I build these up into compositions of contrasting areas. My pictures often look like an out–of–focus photograph, but, unlike photographs which always refer to something out in the real world, eg a face, chair, landscape or whatever, my paintings don’t actually refer to any real objects outside the image, because they are just made–up. In this way I see them as being unsupported, on their own, or without any substance underlying the appearance. This reflects my view of life as being without any firm ground to stand upon and reality as being difficult to grasp or somehow obscured.

By using an airbrush and making my paintings look like manufactured, mass–media images I am also exploring notions of authenticity; particularly in relation to the supposed separation between painting from life and from photographs; and those between paintings done in a painterly, spontaneous manner and carefully painted, tight images. Because rather than thinking there is any essential difference between these ‘opposites’, I believe the difference is only one of degree.

Date of Birth: 1959

University: Sunderland University, BA (Hons) Fine Art

Exhibitions:

Various group and individual exhibitions during the 1980s and 1990s including:

The Whitechapel Open; The Royal Overseas League; The Cleveland Drawing Biennale; South London Gallery Open;
The Guardian sponsored Art for Sale.

I have sold to private collectors in the UK, Italy and America.