Fine Art research Michael Price

Michael Price

Michael Price is an English artist born in Stoke-on-Trent. After a lot of traveling, he moved to New York in 1999. In 2007 he started a studio that teaches artists the old ways of using natural and mineral pigments and their application in oil binding mediums.

In his paintings, Price tries to achieve a sense of timelessness through his exploration of the nude and human figure. In his art he looks at the nude to find the incredible beauty that he sees in the core of the human figure. Almost all of his work starts with drawing from a life model or occasionally looking at ancient Greek sculptures. After drawing many different poses and studying the movement and form of the model, these studies are then taken and used to create the final artwork. Price not only sees the human figure as a body, but as something beautiful, an extension of our divine nature. When he is painting his nudes, Price tries to make them seem as though they are in a timeless universe, revealing the archetypal images as a spirit or energy in the physical world we inhabit.

This way of seeing the tangible and finite world, provided Price with the inspiration for his painting process. He wanted to use the same mineral pigments and gold leaf like the old Renaissance Masters did. The colour for his paint is produced from rocks and crystals including lapis lazuli, azurite and cinnabar mixed with an egg tempera. They create the vivid colours he works with.

In using this style of oils he had to learn a whole new way of painting. Instead of painting over any mistake because the colour of the paint was too bright and translucent to cover the underneath, he had to plan out every part of his paintings. Just as the Renaissance Masters did with their paintings, geometry became very important to Price. This was not only in terms of the proportions of the figure, but the relation to the rectangle, making note of the height and the width. Many of his works refer to the Old Masters who steeped themselves in Euclidean geometry and the philosophical ideas of their day. “Homage to Dürer, Melancholia I” is Price’s modern take on the Master’s angel contemplating the Philosopher’s Stone. Price takes the old ways of painting and turns it into his style of a timeless world.

Price hopes that his works hold up a mirror for people to see the beauty in the world, a world sometimes there isn't much good news to be heard. He believes they need only look to find it.