Wednesday Visitor - Mike Pratt

Mike Pratt 

Considering himself as an unconventional painter or sculptor, Pratt has a recognisable style or theme in many of his works. He thinks with his hands, experimenting is his form of research which I feel i should do more of and just throw out the ideas book and see what comes of it. His pieces are mainly three dimensional, but also paintings as they're hung on the walls. This is very similar to my own as they're usually on canvas, but I add three dimensional sections that give it form and features that stick out from the canvas. Working with Ghent gallery for two years on a show with Liza Valomue, he had the chance to and freedom to explore, no time constraints. I would benefit from this myself as working to deadlines always means that I miss something or i'll come up with better ideas too late on into the project.

Using his old paintings as inspiration for his new ones was a technique that I tried myself in the mini degree and like him, the outcome exceeded what I originally thought the piece would end up like. slowly adding and refining his work means that he is able to develop it, but adding too much can ruin a piece and it's hard to know when to stop, so his solution is to be working on a series that are closely linked and that can be left for a few weeks before being resumed. I have only ever tried this once with a big canvas painting, but in the end it annoyed me more it not being finished.

with a similar problem he sometimes doesn't know how to finish them so he just adds a meaning by text on top. This isn't the best way of finishing a piece that on it's own can work well, this is something i learnt last semester with my mini degree piece where i thought it needed a more detail painting on top, but my tutor told me to leave it as it was and in the end it presented itself much better as an abstract piece, rather than what i'd usually create.

realising that his pieces do not need meaning or text he ditched it in his post graduation work in Rome, where he sent the pieces off without it and it gave him relief. No matter the response. Continuing on with the unfinished look in his studio work he too it to exhibition level and found that they worked much better without the text, showing it's good to take the risks every now and then.