Oil Painting
Mike Barr
Mike is a modern impressionist artist with a particular love of rainy cityscapes and has been recognised both in Australia and overseas.
Artist Profile
Mike is a modern impressionist artist with a particular love of rainy cityscapes and has been recognised both in Australia and overseas
Mike’s 25-year art career has an over-riding theme of highlighting mood rather than detail, whether it has been in his many beachscapes or his popular rainy cityscapes. Mood and feeling have become paramount, so that his paintings most important aspect is that they can be felt not just seen.
A regular award winner both in Australia and overseas, Mike has amassed almost 100 awards for his paintings, including over 20 best-in-show awards. In 2016 he was awarded the important Corporate award at the Victor Harbor Art Show.
Mike is also an art writer and a columnist in the UK magazine ‘The Artist’ since 2021. He also appears in several publications including the award-winning ‘The Art of being Melbourne’ by Maree Coote in 2012
Artist Interview
What medium do you work with, and why have you chosen them?
Acrylic and oil – as for me they can convey the drama and feeling of subject and place.
How does your artwork get from initial concept to exhibition stage?
Every artwork starts with a vision. Something that I have seen or something I have seen that has potential. My works are not facsimiles of photographs or actual scenes but are built upon fact and the mood and feeling is enhanced and often exaggerated to finally produce a vision in paint.
Can you tell us a little more about your creative working environment/studio?
My studio is a private place where work takes place and not a place of public showing or discourse. Visions in paint can only be produced in the solitude of thought and practice that all artists need.
Career Highlights
- Being invited to do a demonstration session at the Art Gallery of South Australia during the very succssesful exhibition of Clarice Becket in 2021
- Winning the ,500 corporate award at the Victor Harbor Art Show
- Being included in the book 'The art of Being Melbourne' which also features many great Australian artists such as Streeton, Roberts, Beckett etc.
