Michael Anderson

My painting process is an investigation into how the action of painting can be distorted, hidden, exaggerated, negated or otherwise modified by the paint or surface it interacts with, how gestural traces may move after their application, and how this alters my intent and the way I navigate the formal elements of painting.

I use oil-based house paints, polyurethane, oils and turps to make mixtures of varying thicknesses, opacity and viscosity. I’m interested in how these mixtures readily interact and self-level when wet and how they lose these qualities as they begin to dry.

I use solid surfaces and find that their differences in absorbency, flexibility and texture can significantly affect the outcome when using the same processes. This had led me to experiment with many wood and metal products throughout my practice. In my current body of work I add objects like wood offcuts, foil, metal sheets and fabric to ply and aluminium sheets as a means to construct a surface and as an underlying composition to work with and against the moving paint.