Figuring It Out for Himself

ANDREA MUIR finds that visual artist MICHAEL FORBES has thrived in the do-it-yourself school of art education

MICHAEL FORBES didn’t take art at school.

‘I couldn’t,’ he says.  ‘I was made to do chemistry instead – I think they tried to hammer it out of me.’

Well, whoever ‘they’ were, they didn’t succeed and now Michael is one of the Highland’s up-and-coming artists – with a difference.

Not for Michael the inspiration from the lochs and mountains, heather and sunsets.  Michael’s paintings are surreal.  They are beautifully painted, funny, and sometimes, scary.  Some are full of metaphorical meaning, others are just visual jokes. His work is not – and has not – been confined by anyone else’s ideas.

‘I think now, in retrospect, being self-taught was the best thing to happen to me.  The only thing I missed about college was the beer – er, social life.’

He laughs and his laughter is infectious.
 
‘No, but it’s true.  I didn’t have anyone telling me what was right and wrong about my pictures; I just knew I had to paint them.’  He continued to paint while he worked his way through various jobs, from drawing office to fish factory.  He even had a shot at the army but he says: ‘all the time I was at the selection centre I kept thinking: What am I doing here?  Then I came home and saw the painting I’d been working on before I went away and I just knew that painting was the only thing for me!’

Michael was brought up in a Ross-shire village, and perhaps this fact has influenced his painting.  There are so many visitors to the Highlandswho fall in love with the scenery, but ordinary and comical life goes on here as much as anywhere else less beautiful.

‘I get inspiration and ideas all over the place.’ He says and refers to the picture ‘Tuesday afternoon.’ ‘It sums up what Inverness used to be like and what Tuesday afternoons can be like, anywhere. I don’t know where the idea came from but I liked it, so I painted it.’

Michael carries an ‘ideas’ book with him and recommends that other artists do the same.

‘You never know when you’re going to see something that captures your imagination and, life being what it is, can make you forget so much really quickly.’

Michael’s most recent successes were the inclusion of the joyful ‘Getting Away from it All’ which can be seen at Inverness airport until July, and the release of a boxed set of cards entitled Adventures of an Orange Cat.

‘I’ve spent the last few weeks learning Flash for the computer to rebuild my website. So, I put the brushes to one side and have been learning Action Script.  My head still hurts!  Still, it saves a fortune on paying some overpriced PC boffin to do something I can hack together myself.’

It seems that Michael’s self-taught ethos continues.

© Andrea Muir, 2004