The purpose underlying my work is to explore something about the relationship between people and the rest of nature.

I create an object which is suggestive of nature but which has an atmosphere and associations which are nevertheless unusual and therefore have the power to demand attention and scrutiny.

My attempt is to surprise the spectator in order to invite an oblique and critical view of the prosaic.

Superficially,  the paintings look to be ‘abstract’ but I do not think of them in this way. I consider them to be realist!

Of course there is no obvious subject matter, in the traditional sense. But, what if the subject of a painting is the taste of a Barbary fig or the scent of Jasmine on a summer evening?

What do these ‘things’ look like?

The paintings are poetic evocations ‘about’ such subjects and can be as real as anything else. In other words the paintings are ‘about something’ rather than ‘of something’.

BIO
Michael Dover-Robinson was born in 1953 in Lancashire, UK.

In 1979 he began studies for a fine art degree, specializing in painting, at Manchester Metropolitan University where he graduated with first class honours and mentions in art history and liberal studies.

In 1985 he went on to further painting studies at the Slade school, University college London.

The following years were spent painting full time, in London.

In 1993, he moved into the world of fine art printing at a big London publishing house. Where he was the studio director and master print maker.

Since 2005, he divides his time between England and France composing and playing Jazz music and building guitars.

Recently he started painting again...

Exhibitions include:

The Angela Flowers gallery, London.1988
The Solomon Gallery, London.1986
The Sue Williams gallery, London.1987
The Flower gallery, London.1987
The Bloomsbury theatre, London.1985
The Kingsgate gallery, London.1987
The Arts centre,Chester.1978
Theatre Clwyd, North Wales.1978
The Grundy House museum, Blackpool.1978
The Manchester Print Workshop gallery, Manchester.1977

If it is legitimate to paint about non visual subjects in this way then there is no reason not to extend this license into more traditional subjects. Thus we may now make paintings, not only of landscape but also, about landscape and in doing so we may find more to say than hitherto was possible within the limits of the tradition.

 A painting is its own case with no real need of a rationalization or justification. It is a ‘thing’ to be recognized just as any other ’thing’ in the world.

The painted space is a unique and paradoxical place where the numinous and poetic meet the concrete and real.

It is a place where elements of the ineffable in human experience can be rendered. It is a place where, when words fail, ‘something’ is still there.  It is  a place, as with music, where, when our philosophies are mute, ‘meaning’ occurs.

- Michael Dover-Robinson