| Copyright © Michael Price Inc. |
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| Artist's Statement: The Polychromatic Nude Introduction Throughout history, the nude, whether male or female, when expressed as a unity of imagination and perception, invariably exhibits a dignity which far removes it from social concepts of nakedness. With each age, the nude whether in painting or sculpture has undergone its own transformation becoming modified and redefined in the process. My personal development and redefinition of the nude focuses on the “perception” that our corporeality is an extension of a transcendent reality. This relationship between body, spirit and soul has been a theological preponderant for almost two thousand years. |
| The Real and the Imaginary C. G. Jung wrote in ‘Mysterium Coniunctionis’ (vol. 14 of his collected writings): “The existence of a transcendental reality is indeed evident in itself, but is uncommonly difficult for our consciousness to construct intellectual models which would give a graphic description of the reality we have perceived”. My insight into this fundamental issue has changed over the years from my dynamic ephemeral figures of the 1980’s to my most recent polychromatic nudes which attest this basic precept that the archetypal world inside ourselves is just as real - or imaginary - as the physical world we inhabit. |
| The Drawings Drawing from the live model plays a central role in my working process. The work with each model explores that individual's kinaesthetic awareness through undirected and spontaneous movement. Each drawing session thus becomes a minimalist theater of the imagination. The drawings are quickly executed using bamboo pens, bistre or Chinese ink and wash on paper. The life drawings as well as the study of ancient Greek sculptures essentially inform the paintings in order to explore the parameters of the nude as an archetype. |
| The Paintings The archetype is not a thing in itself, but an experience. I therefore view my work with the figure over the past 30 years and the polychromatic nudes since the early 1990’s not as a representation of the phenomenal world, but as an autonomous numinous experience. Whether the figure grows out of the picture plane as a two dimensional illusion, or a three dimensional relief, the inner dynamic and aura of the figure is juxtaposed against a symbolic or abstract event. The use of gold-leaf in recent works is in the traditional role of late European medieval and early Renaissance painting in which the alchemical purification of the human spirit is elevated or transmuted from base material into gold (either literally or metaphorically according to the individual’ s perception of reality). The gold-leaf not only defines the picture plane, but also functions as an integral spiritual and visual component of the painting. The gateway to this world, both physically and spiritually, is through the use of natural colour, i.e. colour prepared from rocks and crystals. The inner dynamic of the nude generates a colour field or space. This “chromatic space” is created by controlling the pigment particle size (literally the chroma) of the crystals and rocks I use to make pigment. |
| The Pigments The natural and mineral pigments I use produce a very different palette of colour and luminosity compared to modern synthetic pigments whether as oil or tempera paint. The pigments include lapis lazuli, azurite, malachite, cinnabar, orpiment, realgar, vivianite, purpurite, red and green jaspers, stibnite, pyrolusite, cerussite, galena, calcite, quartz and Japanese oyster-shell white (Gofun). Other natural pigments include natural indigo, the root madders, cochineal red, and earth and ochre pigments. I have published three papers on mineral pigment preparation and application since 2000. This is the result of 16 years of studio and archival research into the European Renaissance palette as well as collaboration with numerous scientific institutes. |
| Conclusion The human figure or the nude is a symbol for the 'ultimate concern of being and non-being'. In addition, the association of the nude with its archetypal antecedents lives eternally in human consciousness. The nude is ontologically the richest of symbols, with infinite depth, and challenges us with all its levels of complexity. As being incorporates non-being, (following the principle delineated in the writings of the philosopher-theologian Paul Tillich) so the figurative incorporates the abstract. From my point of view, there can be no duality just as life incorporates death. This ontological position allows my inner vision to focus on the inherent and astonishing beauty of nature and to transcribe my experience into a rich and imaginative language. |
| David Findlay Galleries, New York City, March 2003: from a Press Release Michael Price’s paintings are bold images of nude figures inhabiting natural landscapes. He makes no attempt to render them in natural colors. Instead, he depicts his subjects in primary colors that glow with an almost incandescence. Perhaps it is Price’s brilliant palette of exaggerated color that instills his images with an other-worldly quality. The simple nudity of his figures also imbues them with a particular importance and even timelessness. Throughout the course of Western art deities have been depicted in this manner. |
| The Discovery of Protocols for the Use of Natural Pigments in Oil Painting - the late James Beck, professor of Art History, Columbia University, New York. Michael Price has restored and preserved for Western culture our Renaissance tradition, that depended on artists and their assistants grinding the semiprecious stones such as lapis lazuli, azurite or malachite and mixing them with oils according to propriety recipes. Time - and, from my vantage point as an art historian, carelessness - caused the Western culture to irretrievably lose the methods of making natural pigments. Michael Price has single-handedly mitigated that historic loss. His rediscovery of the lost historic methods for preparing mineral pigments reopens and represents this medium for artists across the world. As a teacher and professor of Art History to today’s young artists, I am absolutely convinced that Michael Price’s painting and speaking presence in the United States will signify areawakening of that tradition. |
| Henry Gregg Gallery, New York, July 2005: from a Press Release New York based British artist Michael Price presents a hitherto unimaginable interpretation of Central Park, a park presided over by the archetypal figure 'Venus', the symbolic goddess of love. The large oil paintings from the past two years, titled 'Central Park Venus', present the artist's development of the chromatic nude inhabiting a landscape as an extended chromatic space. This original color concept relies on the chroma of the different natural and mineral pigment particle sizes to create volume or depth. The artist hand-grinds all his colors from rocks and crystals and prepares them according to a variety of protocols. Price, an expert on natural and mineral pigments, has published his research into the pigment preparation of the colors of the Renaissance palette in the journal ‘Leonardo’ (MIT press), and recently in ‘Artwatch UK’. This truly luminous color transports the nudes to a transcendent other-worldly existence although the archetype of Venus stays firmly rooted in the transformed scenes of Central Park. Venus reflects and amplifies the changing moods and spirit of the park. Each chromatic nude is painted either with lapis lazuli, azurite, malachite, cinnabar, orpiment or even a simple natural yellow ochre collected by the artist from rock outcrops in southern Utah. The vibrant color imbues the nudes with a freedom, beauty and dignity seldom experienced with this genre. |
| Next Solo Exhibition with Catalogue Title: Intimations of Immortality Walter Wickiser Gallery, NY 1st - 30th September 2009 |