Artist Research: Michael Tompsett

Art and design has interested Michael Tompsett since an early age, so much so that art class was the one lesson at school he genuinely looked forward to every week. After school and university he had the fortune to be able continue his passion, working as a senior designer at Conde Nast Publications in London. After an exhilarating 12 years he bid farewell to his job and England, and moved a couple of thousand miles south to Spain which he now calls home. He now dedicates himself full time to his artistic pursuits in the tranquil and idyllic surroundings of a Mediterranean coastal village.

Michael Tompsett had been experimenting with a particular painting using different subject matters, such as portraits and landmarks, and his friend asked if he wouldn’t mind doing a world map in the same style (map art). He duly obliged and luckily they were very pleased with the results. Then he posted the artwork on some blogs and received positive feedback. As a result, it got him thinking about other ways in which maps could be presented in different and thought-provoking ways. He then found the process extremely interesting and fulfilling, and realized that he had found his niche.

At first the art was more of a hobby of his, doing the odd thing for friends. A few suggested that he could sell the work that he was doing, so the hobby became a hobby with the occasional cash benefits! As he built up a portfolio of work, and it became clear there was a market for it, he started taking the hobby a bit more seriously. It was still something he was doing in addition to his job. He left his job when he relocated to Spain.

This is the skyline of St Louis Missouri painted by Michael Tompsett. The buildings go up in rainbow colours and the painting features the US. The paint is detailed and precise but at the bottom of the buildings the paint drips downwards, randomly. The artist does not include the sky, people or anything below the buildings. This works effectively because it means that the buildings stand out- however there is less detail in the painting. A rainbow is a sign of hope so in this instance could be hope for an even better future in the USA. Furthermore, colour in this piece is not especially used to represent how the buildings actually look like but to show what they express.

This piece is 2D. Tone is used to make the separation between colours not as obvious and to emphasize colour fading away- dripping downwards

Colour dripping downwards can show the bad state the city is in now as it looks like the buildings are breaking down. The loop at the top of the building could represent the shape of the rainbow and how it’s the only thing keeping the city together. I believe that this piece represents hope after anything faced in life. The sky may not be painted on to show that it is limitless and hope is wherever you want it to be.

This influences my work because of the colour used to represent the skyline whilst representing the artist’s own opinion; the colours also seem like it progresses from day to night. Many opinions are therefore brought across through the use of a few colours.

 

 

 

This is a painting of the phoenix Arizona skyline. The colours black, white and grey are used to create this piece of art. The background is black and the outline of buildings is in white with grey to emphasize certain parts of a building. Again, paint drips downwards to show negativity in the pieces. Different tones were used and so the background was darker around the edges than around the center.

The painting is 2D and features a line of buildings with grey streaks across some of them. The artwork I composed to interest viewers to the buildings. Furthermore, they grey stipes almost look like lightning. Unlike the other image, nothing is holding the buildings together and the black sky does not give a sense of hope either. At a first glance, the painting looks as if something may have exploded from the foundations of the houses. Afterwards, you could argue that the painting is actually positive and represents people having a good time (for example using fireworks).

The piece may have been created for diverse reasons. One hand the piece could have been created to inform readers that the city was worsening and something good was not happening. On the other hand, the piece could have been created just for entertainment as a way of saying that even though it is night time, the city is still wide awake.

Finally, this influences my work as I can create, purposely, two contrasting opinions for my artwork- therefore captivating the minds of many people with different opinions. Furthermore, it shows me that the skyline of places can be represented in different ways depending on the techniques the writer used and opinion’s they attempted to form.