Michael Stuart Green
painter & printmaker

MICHAEL STUART GREEN HELD A MAJOR EXHIBITION OF NEW WORK AT TORE EARLIER IN THE YEAR. DETAILS BELOW

Please click on the images for all details. In the case of framed original prints, prices refer to the framed edition, and unframed editions may be available to order at £20 less.

In his largest exhibition to date, Michael Stuart Green shows more than thirty examples of his diverse output, ranging from delicate dry-points to a huge, figurative woodcut, by way of paintings (both oil and water-colour) and several other forms of printmaking used separately and in combination. His subjects are largely drawn from Scottish landscape and architecture, sometimes mimetically and at other times in more abstract fashion. Many of the works are locally based on the environs of Redcastle, near Tore.

Many artists strive to attain recognisable, personal styles; not so, Michael Stuart Green. This exhibition of more than thirty recent works reveals an unwillingness to subjugate his subject matter to any one stylistic interpretation or artistic approach. Nor has he any need to: with an unusually wide range of techniques at his disposal he is able to respond as mood and interest suggest. There is, though, a common element: that of Scottish landscape and its architecture, but which Stuart Green treats variously as lyrical or harsh, intimate or remote, employing whichever medium seems most apt. For the most part his descriptions are mimetic, not surprising for an artist brought up on Ingres’ dictum that “drawing is the probity of art”, drawing which can be discerned even in his more abstract pieces.

It is in his use of two techniques separated by 600 years that Stuart Green’s drawing is most explicit: dry-point, where the image is first drawn by scratching on to a printing plate, and original digital print (ODP) where the artist draws directly into a computer so as to generate virtual images which can nevertheless be printed. Easier to grasp, perhaps, are the water-colours where line begins to yield to colour; while in the oil paintings it is in the painted surface that the interest lies. Likewise, the relief prints (wood and lino) have enormous surface presence but also return us to drawing, this time executed by knife and gouge and which are as muscular as the dry-points are delicate.

The greatest muscularity, however, is to be found in the one item that has no Scottish connection. A huge woodcut, black and white and evocative of its ancient European precursors, “Terezin” is a visceral reaction to events in Czechoslovakia almost 70 years ago.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

"An artist’s statement is his work. If written descriptions are also used, far from amplifying that statement they over-simplify it, they cheapen it Words are linear and sequential but a picture is not and, consequently, is a far richer, far more complex communication. If what I wanted to show could have been said in words, I would have used them."

MICHAEL STUART GREEN

Studied at Birmingham College of Arts & Craft 1959 -1963 and Leicester College of Art 1963 - 1965.
Worked as a designer (architecture and museum design) in Milan & London before becoming a lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee in 1969.
Set up Scotland's second only open-access printmaking studio at Kirk Tower House, near Montrose (together with Sheila MacFarlane) in 1971.
Moved to Edinburgh College of Art/Heriot-Watt University in 1984 to head own department, specialising in the adaptive re-use of old buildings plus design for museums and the stage.
Served on several national/government committees concerned with tertiary art and design education and wrote two related books.
Outwith academia, ran own design consultancy (architecture, graphics and theatre) while
continuing painting and printmaking whenever possible!
Work in collections worldwide, including Scottish Gallery of Modern Art.
Retired to Lochcarron in 1999 to concentrate on painting and printmaking.
Affectionately recalls past interactions and exchanges with: designer Naum Slutsky; architects Ernesto Rogers, Carlo Scarpa and Franco Albini; printmakers S.W. Hayter,
Michael Rothenstein, Katie Clemson, Kate van Houten and Takesada Matsutani; and scenographers Josef Svoboda, Tadeusz Kantor and Jocelyn Herbert. All have influenced
his thinking.

MICHAEL STUART GREEN lives and works in the West Highland village of Lochcarron, Scotland. He is a full-time professional artist having now retired from teaching at The Edinburgh College of Art. Over the years his work has been bought widely and will be found in both public and private collections in the UK and overseas. His subject matter is very varied, ranging from landscape, figurative and architectural to the conceptual.

Paintings are mainly in oil or acrylic; original print techniques include monotype, lino-cut, woodcut, collagraph and, latterly, digital - in which images are drawn directly into the computer. Hybrid prints are also made using various combinations of these techniques.