Biography
Abstract artist Mike Smalley is best known for his complex, luminous paintings in oil and graphite. After a successful career in art direction and advertising that spanned two continents and forty years Smalley enrolled in university fine art studies. Employing the rigorous disciplines learned in the communications industry he focused on developing a new visual vocabulary with which he wished to look past the representational to a world of pure expression.
By combining his roots in the graphic arts with the freedom of abstraction Smalley has built an established artistic career that encompasses his signature large scale oil paintings along with works in pastel, collage and mixed media. His meticulously rendered paintings carefully balance layers of colour, texture and line, along with contrasts of translucency versus opaqueness, to create works rich with visual interest and palpable emotion.
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