Artist's Bio, Second Draft

Michael was born and raised in the city of Duncan on Vancouver Island. He began his formal, post-secondary art-education at Malaspina College in Nanaimo, B.C., later moving to Vancouver to attend Simon Fraser University and complete his B.A. in Visual Art (1994). While he has participated in group shows in civic and academic galleries such as the foyer of the Cowichan Theatre (Duncan, 1985), the Nanaimo Art Gallery (Nanaimo, 1990), and the Simon Fraser University Gallery (Burnaby, 1993), Michael has preferred over the last decade to show in café galleries, nightclubs, and alternative venues. Some of these venues in Vancouver have included the Atlantis nightclub in Yaletown, The Cave alternative theatre space off Commercial Drive, and Ironworks Studios in Gastown.

Even well before his formal university education, Michael's artistic influences developed along two disparate threads. One the one hand he has had an interest in science and mathematics since an early age and began working with computers in the late 1970's and to study computer science at the university level concurrent to working toward his visual art degree. On the other hand he has long been interested in the "Bohemian" artists of the "Belle Epoche" of 1890's Paris-- an interest that infamously inspired him to separate from a tour group in Montmartre in order to "see where the artists really lived" when he was only eleven. Michael's continued interest in Bohemianism also manifests itself in his involvement in the contemporary alternative nightlife of Vancouver as a regular photographer and, on occasion, travelling as far afield as Chicago, Toronto, and New York to find inspiration for his Bohemian inspired work.

His two threads of interest have come together in several different lines of work. They include digital work based on 19th century stereographs, and nightclub paintings inspired by Renoir and the early work of Picasso that are worked from his own digital photographs. Some of his early "landscape" work is painted from images generated by computer programs he wrote himself and these lead directly into his more recent "forest" series of paintings also inspired by the early work of Piet Mondrian. His drawing styles are diversely inspired by the "low brow" art popular in the alternative nightclub community and the various late 19th century and early 20th century illustrators.

Michael's paintings, drawings and photographs hang in private collections from Vancouver to New York. His on-line portfolio can be viewed at http://www.mbarrick.net and he can be reached at mbarrick@mbarrick.net or at  (604) 684-8372.