What makes Michael's art unique?
"It's all in the fingertips!"
…a treasured plate or jug...cracked, broken perhaps...but definitely not ruined. "Pique Assiette" is a technique which uses broken crockery shards to create new art... think of it as making a mosaic of memories.
Michael's work stands out because of his imagination and the exquisite care he takes with every single shard ...meticulously transforming what has been broken into beautiful new creations.
Flair, Passion and Care combine...
Michael lives in a seventeenth Century farmhouse that dates from the time when people buried their rubbish in middens. Over the years, his garden has yielded a myriad of old treasures. He was beachcombing one day with his grandchildren and promised to make them something with what they were picking up - and a passion was born. Since then, Michael has brought his engineering background and artistic abilities to bear upon his pictures. Using basic tools, he works with meticulous precision crafting the materials into unique works - and a secret ingredient he calls Ron. Ron was Michaels father-in law, and as a young man he travelled the world as a flight attendant.
Discovering some broken blue tiles in Ron's garden shed, Michael vowed, wherever suitable, to include a shard in his finished pictures...so a small part of Ron's memory lives on, and continues to travel wherever the art is sent. When a picture's tones include pink, Michael adds a piece of pink tile from his own house renovation project. Nothing old or broken need be forgotten: in giving new purpose to broken items and new life to damaged memories, Michael also upcycles old wood to make the box inside the frames, and recycles a percentage of the money made to various charities