Micheal Madigan

For the past 30 years, I’ve explored the process of non-representational painting, experimenting with all of the aspects of design available to a painter to attempt to mine the deeper recesses of human imagination. My work attempts to evoke something within each viewer that may be just beyond verbal description, just outside narrative connection between subject matter and meaning. I believe that these deep recesses are a Sanctuary for shared memory, a wellspring of unity.

Following that path as I have, the direction it has taken me in the past several years brings a deepened response to the marriage of process and consciousness. It has changed the way I approach making paintings, as will happen continually throughout a painter’s life as the unknown path is explored. The many sites I have visited throughout Ireland, Italy, Spain and America have had a profound influence on the direction of my work. I think, initially, the visits were made to provide subject matter for a new direction I had sensed developing in my painting. (Since subject matter is not a typical tool in the non-representational painter’s toolbox, the strength of the calling took me by surprise). I like to believe that I place orthodoxy after creativity in my own paintings, so in answering this call, I knew I had to remain open to whatever changes might come.

The paintings you are viewing are an amalgam of images and experiences from these many pilgrimages. They address the way we build and share memories, and the gradual surrender of those memories to time.