Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gallery

Michael Berry was born in Melbourne, Australia, into a scientific family who also had a deep appreciation and understanding of the visual arts and music.

At a very early age he held a pencil; Michael began drawing immediately. His brain seemed wired to be dominated by visual perceptions, and hence he remained fascinated with the images we make, both technically and psychologically – it is the predominant way his brain processes information.

Introduced to the microscopic cellular world at about the age three by his father, he became aware of positive and negative spatial shifts, where inside and outside altered depending on which was the primary focus, this perception evidently imprinted itself in his mind – so the micro and macrocosms have always been one movement for him.

Michael was fascinated by all the artistic pictures and scientific illustrations he could find, where the universal visual language was miraculously revealed. This passionate inquiry has never abated.

As a research scientist, he spontaneously began illustrating theses, presentation slides, and generally being responsible for sharing the skills and gift of illustration with the students and lecturers.

Michael began professional sculpture in the early 1970s before shifting focus to painting, collage, and assemblage in the early 1980s. His exhibition of assemblages featured internationally in the first ever edition of Craft Arts International magazine in 1984.

Since then he held many solo exhibitions, been included in over 60 group shows, completed public and private commissions, featured in numerous national and international publications, written four radio plays, published two original poetry collections, a book on his work, and beyond - an abstract graphic novel with no words or recognisable imagery.

Michael also designs tapestries for his wife and artistic partner Patricia Hemingway.

http://www.michaelberryartist.com

Drawing the Line

All the work - paintings, drawings, collage or assemblage - relies upon the artist’s
discovery of ‘Symphonic Space’, which is an expansion of the universal visual art
language, in particular the abstract expressionist multiple vanishing point and
shifting focus, with added reference to classical musical composition, and the
instantaneous action of pure perception optically.

The universal visual language is relied upon, in this painterly world of positive and negative
pictorial shifts, spatial illusion, the vibratory dimension of colour, pure perception, and
out-focused vision, to shatter the ‘autonomous viewer outside the picture plane’ by
simultaneously removing the concept of a safe viewing distance for a work of art, thus
placing the observer in the picture plane without the anchor of subjective knowledge.

This current series of drawings entitled ‘Drawing the Line’ explores, in coloured pencil,
pen and ink, the visual intelligence acting as visual thinking manifest as the free-form
breaking of images as object-bound knowledge, a state where personalised memory is
disempowered allowing insightful perception to act.

Only then is art seen afresh without the interference of personal opinion as emotive reaction
and the habit of regurgitation of the self’s hypnogogic conditioned imagery. —  Michael Berry