The Other house, 2016

Michael Cusack  

Michael Cusack is an Irish-born, Australia-based abstract painter. His work is painterly, emotive, dramatic, and evocative of the struggle between forces of nature.

Cusack employs a highly physical technique, full of striving and intense focus. He takes a layered, inquisitive, painterly approach to his work. He builds his surfaces up with color, coaxing shapes into existence. The push and pull of warm and cool hues creates the illusion of depth and space, while visible brush strokes reject illusion, calling attention instead to the hand and mind of the artist.

Cusack works in a way that is both formal and conceptual. His process is physical and visceral: a negotiation between paint, surfaces, and the forces of his technique. Behind the technique is a rhythm that is trying to communicate through the composition.
The struggle between the straightforward elements of technique and the metaphysical aspect of ideas is evident in the labor-intensive presence of the work.

Cusack is inspired by the urge to understand his own instinctual visual language. His lexicon is related to nature, built on the importance of color, composition, the emergence of shapes and forms, the relationships between layers, push and pull, dynamism, and time.

He uses color to create drama. His shapes and forms are locked in struggle: sometimes color and space allow them to relax, other times the elements of the work push the composition towards conflict.

Longing is everywhere: Cusack is revisiting the past, searching for a way to the future. His striving pours out of his paintings, compelling not just the eye of the spectator but also the heart and mind.
His mature, formal understanding of paint and technique are mobilized toward the communication of something universal about human/animal nature.

His paintings are included in numerous public and private collections in Australia, Asia and Europe, including those of the Newcastle Regional Museum, Newcastle Art Gallery, Tweed Regional Gallery, the Port Macquarie Collection, the Lismore Regional Gallery, BHP Billiton, ABN Amro, Artbank, the Wycombe City Council, and Macquarie Bank.