About the Artist, Michael Price, natural and mineral pigments

Michael Price giving a weekend workshop in his New York studio

The artist preparing pigment from rocks and
crystals. The pigments such as the powerful red of
cinnabar, yellow of orpiment, green of malachite
and blues such as lapis lazuli and azurite.

A weekend workshop for artists interested in learning about the
preparation and application of natural and mineral pigments. Groups
are limited to a maximum of five persons.

"Constanze", one of the artist's models.

Michael Price at work painting the Delicate Arch

Some light relief in the early evening painting "The Delicate Arch" in southern Utah!

Work in Progress: the beginning of a large relief painting,
"A Part of Eternity No.43, Twenty-five Centuries of War".
Below the completed painting.

Angel Heasook et Monsieur in the desert's afternoon sun painting "The Needles"

The artist with his niece Nadia at the temples of
Un-joo-sa, South Korea 2005.

A Korean Quartet
Left to right: Blue Bamboo; The Guardian of Kyung-Bok-Goong;
Venus of Un-joo-saa; Green Tea

A Part of Eternity No. 44, Oh! How Deep the Grave.

The artist and his wife, pianist, Heasook Rhee

"Central Park Venus" exhibited in Englewood, NJ in 2005.

A Part of Eternity No 43, Twenty-five Centuries of War

From a P.B.S. TV documentary broastcast, Houston 2002:

"Welcome to the world of British artist Michael Price, the first modern man to rediscover the technique of pigment preparation of the
Renaissance masters.... Since the transition from the use of natural pigments to modern-day synthetic pigments, many of the studio secrets
of the Renaissance were lost. Then Michael Price, after seven years of painstaking research rediscovered what was done 500 years ago.
First, he found the difference between synthetic pigments and mineral pigments is the pigment particle size. The synthetics are incredibly
fine powder whereas the mineral pigments are fine sand. He began to separate the different particle sizes of the mineral pigment azurite
into different hues of blue from a deep rich blue to a pale sky blue just like the masters of the Renaissance. Eventually, he began doing this
with other minerals such as realgar, malachite, cinnabar and lapis lazuli.
Today, Michael Price is absorbed by the language of Renaissance colour and the intensity of natural pigments...a rewarding discovery."

The Figurative Art of Michael Price

A PART OF ETERNITY
In his diary, Leonardo da Vinci wrote that
the true experience of the artist is at times
so terrifying that it is the duty of the artist
to cloak his experience in the garb of love
and perfection. The most common images
of twentieth and twenty-first century art,
however, whether painted or photographic,
are not only full of uncertainty and anxiety,
but celebrate a condition of raw aggression.
Without the ingredient of human darkness,
although this cannot be ignored, art has
become almost unmarketable. Modern
media banquets in the throws of this
profitable misery and the artist as a mirror
of society has become enmeshed in this
vicious circle. Without the cutting edge of
the barbaric, together with the celebration
of the shadow side of humanity, much art
faces being discredited as naive whether
abstract or with reference to the
phenomenal world.

Bertrand Russell in his History of Western
Philosophy talks about the conflict between
civilized and barbaric behaviour as a tension
that runs throughout history. The
distinction between the civilized man and
the savage is that of forethought or
prudence. Civilization may check the
barbaric through laws but our present
situation shows that barbarism accompanies
us at each stage of the development of
civilization. In ancient Greece, Russell
states, "The worshipper of Dionysus reacts
against prudence. In intoxication, physical
or spiritual, he recovers an intensity of
feeling which prudence had destroyed; he
finds the world full of delight and beauty,
and his imagination is suddenly liberated
from the prison of everyday
preoccupations". He continues, "In the
sphere of thought, sober civilization is
roughly synonymous with science. But
science, unadulterated, is not satisfying;
men need also passion and art and religion".

For centuries, the common ground shared
by art and the religious instinct has been
passion and imagination, that intensity of
feeling and quality of mind which elevates
man beyond the existential. The soul
through the corporeal and temporal
extension of body and mind has the
possibility of experiencing the most
powerful and personal gifts of life, from
perception via the senses to the imaginative
with its psychic insights. If an artist has any
responsibility to humanity, it is perhaps to
reveal this essential core of the human
drama presented - as Leonardo put it - with
love and perfection. The Greeks of
antiquity used the inner visions they had of
their gods as a model for the human drama
which still moves us over two thousand
years later. In comparison, the common
denominator underlying the vision of the
majority of people at the beginning of the
twenty-first century is restricted to the
fulfillment of personal needs.

The twenty-first century continues to
witnessthe continued estrangement of body
and soul whereby the soul is in danger of
becoming a quantifiable concept that enters
or leaves the body according to various
systems of religious belief. The unfortunate
result is that life becomes synonymous with
the fallen state per se. Neither the rise of
religious fundamentalism with its
accompanying barbarism nor new age cults
are redressing the balance. Most religions
continue to glorify the pure soul state
whereas the body has remained a sinful
embarrassment. The question now is
whether religion and art can find a
meaningful language to recover the passion
of the soul's incarnation into a part of
eternity which we experience as the realm
of human concerns.

About the Artist: Michael Price in his New York loft