Michael Smee Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1946 -

Michael “Mick” Smee was born in Chelmsford in 1946. After school in Chelmsford and Billericay, he went on to study at Colchester School of Art from 1961 to 1965. There he obtained a diploma in Design and Fine Art. Straight after Art School he joined Birmingham Repertory Theatre as a designer and scenic artist. At the same time, he occasionally moonlighted at The Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-Upon-Avon. In 1967 he moved to London to work at The Royal Opera House, when Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev were principal dancers. This was an exciting time. A year later, in 1968,

Mick joined Thames Television as a scenic artist, making backdrops and matte glass shots (1). Whilst at Thames TV, he worked on Adrian McKinty's adaptation THE SUN IS GOD, a major film on the life and work of J M W Turner, starring Leo McKern. This included copying many of Turner's paintings such as "The Fighting Temeraire" and "Rain, Steam and Speed".

After leaving Thames TV he freelanced for T.V. and film productions, including “Monthy Python & The Holy Grail”, and the rock opera “Tommy” (directed by Ken Russell). He also worked for London Weekend Television and Shepperton Studios.

During the whole of this period, because of his talent as a portrait painter, he also produced commissioned artworks, painting family groups and individual portraits, mainly of those connected to the film and TV industry.

In 1978 he took up a post as a lecturer at Colchester School of Art where he taught drawing and painting. There he played a major role in developing the Applied Art and Design Course, which was later entitled “Design Crafts”. He retired from teaching full time on the BA Honours Fine Art Degree Course in 2006 to concentrate on his own work.

In 2005 he was a prize-winner of the prestigious Singer & Friedlander Sunday Times Watercolour Competition.

Michael has had, to date, nine solo exhibitions and numerous mixed exhibitions, many of these located in London, at The Mall Galleries and The New Grafton Gallery, and in Essex and Suffolk. He exhibits regularly at Hayletts Gallery, Maldon and Geedon Gallery, Fingeringhoe, both in Essex.

In 2000 he designed the stained-glass Millennium window at St Nicholas Church in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex, where he lives with his wife Nicola, an illustrator and author of children’s books.

He became a member of Colchester Art Society in 1978 and is now an Honorary Member. He has been on the Selection Committee a number of times.

Statement

The main subjects of Michael’s paintings are bar interiors and exteriors, and urban street life in general. Much of this imagery derives from his interest and fascination with observing his fellow human beings and the ensuing clash of cultures in public places. This captivation also comes from his

stimulating time spent working at the Opera House in Covent Garden, when the fruit and vegetable market was still in operation, and the hustle and bustle of colourful characters and vibrant pub/café life existed on this most theatrical of doorsteps. Mick will often incorporate individuals in his paintings, connected with art or entertainment – such as Picasso, Sister Wendy Beckett, Tony Hancock and Tommy Cooper, to name a few. An interesting aspect of some of the bar interiors concerns the way he perceives the paintings, comparing them to landscapes, where for example the top of the bar would be the horizon.

For a long time Michael has had an interest in 17th century Dutch genre painting and any painting with an ambiguity and hint of narrative. There are for example elements of Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro in his work. This Flemish influence can also be seen in the way he records people and places. He echoes the great masters by recording a way of life which will eventually disappear.

An early source of influence was Edouard Manet’s Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère. Other influential artistsinclude Edward Hopper, William Hogarth, Toulouse Lautrec and Francis Bacon. In Michael’s paintings, there are often enigmatic solitary figures in urban surroundings.

Michael’s paintings are not meant to be accurate representations, even if some places are recognisable, they are basically imaginative and impressionistic. His sitters are not stuck in time and place, they are animated. And when Michael says of himself that he is a simple person, it is far from true. His work is complex; it is the work of an artist who has absorbed artistic lessons from the past to produce something aesthetically pleasing and intellectually stimulating.

This particular painting entitled Brown Bar–Amsterdam was frequented by Michael and Ian Hay when they took their students on field trips to Holland, where museum visits and sketchbook projects were organised.