This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Raised in Portland, Oregon, Michael Gibbons became a confirmed "plein
aire" painter because of the exhilaration of responding to "the spirit
of the particular moment." From May to November, he paints in
Toledo, Oregon, and the rest of the year from his studio in Tubac,
Arizona. He travels regularly in Europe, especially England,
Ireland and France.
An Irishman, he started painting in oil in
1957, having designed accessessories for Porsches when he was in his
20s. His art talent was obvious from childhood, and by the time
he was in highschool, he was an invited member of the Oregon Society
of Artists. In 1968, he became a full-time painter, but he did
not paint outside a studio until he moved to Toledo, Oregon.
In
1998, he completed a 62" X 42" painting, which was installed in
January, 1999 in the newly renovated Oregon governor's mansion.
He did the work by painting ten small paintings of the Arnold Creek
Estuary on site and then enlarging each view in his studio. His
studio in Toledo is in a former Methodist Church, built in 1887, and
across from The Old Vicarage, an historic house, which he helped
convert into the Yaquina River Museum of Art. Open by appointment
and run as a charitable trust, the museum has a collection of about 125
paintings including work by Gibbons, and California painters Ken Auster
and Emil Carlsen.
Of his approach to painting he says that he tries to lead the viewer
into his paintings through the bottom picture plane. He uses
"geometry with a golden section that's laid out in a series of ratios"
that determine the central focus.
Sources include:
Information from the artist
Wolf Schneider, "My World", Southwest Art, February 2006, pp. 98-99
|
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|