Mike Waldron

Mike Waldron is a painter and mark-maker. His work hangs on walls in many countries around the world, and his diverse approach to subject matter has found devotees as far away as USA, Ukraine, Bosnia, Slovakia and Dubai, as well as closer to home. He is principally a colourist and storyteller who uses painting to communicate. Counter to the orthodoxy Mike enjoys talking about his work and the meaning behind each piece, not withstanding that every piece itself tells its own story.

Mike paints for himself and tends to hope that others subsequently share his enthusiasm He studied painting in Liverpool during the mid 1980s and learned more about people than he did about perspective, line and tone. Since leaving formal study he has been travelling and learning in every corner of the globe, mainly about people and how they see the world. This has informed his work for the past fifteen years. Surprisingly figurative work is not his sole or even dominant subject matter.

​“I love to depict people, but invariably I am more interested in their relationship to their surroundings” Mike is drawn to painters such as Gwen John or Caspar David Friedrich who were adept at capturing the emotion of the lone figure in a domestic setting or romantic landscape. Mike has always been drawn to the tensions that appear around every corner, between beauty and decay, sublime light and profound shadow, wild nature and the smallness of the built environment. These dynamic tensions often find themselves into his work, whether large abstract expressionist canvases, small watercolour sketches, lino-cut prints, wild landscapes or many-peopled fauvist and symbolist allegories.

Growing up in Manchester in the 60s and 70s, a time of great societal and cultural shift, imbued Mike with a passion for northern landscapes, urban and wild. He retains an abiding love for the streets that are still clinging on, the people who have changed, yet haven’t changed, the habits and rhythms of daily life. “I love nothing more than trying to capture the late afternoon light bouncing off a rain slicked roof, with somebody’s Mam hurrying home with chips for the table.”

If he had to have one maxim to recommend his work it would be ‘Art doesn’t have to match the sofa”.

Photo Credit: littlelens_photography88