Art in the Pub by Mike Mclean

If you guys have had a look around the pub lately you will have seen some unique art on corrugated iron and canvas. These incredible artworks are for sale ask your friendly staff about them or go to surfcoastart.com to have a look at pricing or more amazing features. Below is a little bit about Mike McLean

Mike McLean is an award winning critically successful artist, his works represented in global collections including New York, London and Australia.

"Mike's art is unique and of the highest standard."
Lane - Sydney. "We purchased an original Mike through SEEN last year....it still captures us every day."
Sascha - Melbourne.

"HI Mike,
I just LOVE THE PAINTING!!! It just looks so fresh and bright in the house. Can't stop admiring it. Red is perfect for our lounge which has red cushions and a red rug! Can't thank you enough!"
Sam - Melbourne.

"Mike McLean’s striking paintings reveal his internal emotional attachment to his close circle of family, friends and those he observes around him. His works are highly distinctive, characterized by vibrant colours and bold painterly brushstrokes.

Mike is an artist deeply concerned with the process of painting. He can only paint when settled in a regular routine with a surrounding that "works" for him. His works are studies exploring the texture of paint, the expressive gesture of the brush and the nature of the canvas surface. It is these concerns that allow him to represent dramatic emotions and colours so effectively. The layers of paint with which Mike builds up on the surfaces of his work reflect layers of emotional state itself. Blocks of colour convey the rich emotional background to each image. Small patches of under-painting remain visible and recall the raw personal state of the artist beneath the lush bold image that captures the viewer.

Mike’s paintings are also studies in composition. Some works are dramatic landscapes conveying people in moments of paused emotional states. In other paintings, there is a basic, block-like view of the entities displaying only base engagement with each other on the canvas; an almost autistic viewpoint or observation struggling to convey (via the painterly medium)  the way we engage as humans.

Mike’s often patterning of colour and gesture upon the canvas recalls the works of Andy Warhol and another noted Australian artist Michael Leunig. Mike's works remain representations of a unique emotional states he has personally experienced (the birth of a child, the engagement with a lover etc). They flicker between the two dimensional canvas surface and the three dimensional dramatic vistas of pebbled earth and open cloudy sky that characterize the South-east coast of England where he spent a decade rearing a young family. This flickering between two dimensional and abstraction and three dimensional vista can also be found in the art of English painters such as Peter Lanyon and William Scott. It is also a characteristic of Fred William's most striking landscapes."

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