Michael Muir

Born in Scotland and having spent his childhood in Southeast Asia, Michael Muir (b.1975) is a contemporary artist based in Sydney, Australia. Honing his studio skills through formal studies in painting and design, Muir has departed from traditional plein-air painting to describe more ambiguous visual puzzles derived from the urban landscape.

With Mark Rothko, Paddy Bedford, Jeffrey Smart, and Francis Bacon as influences, Muir’s paintings are flattened-out picture planes with solid colour blocks in a consistently muted palette. Muir's background in graphic design and art equips him with a distinctive perspective on geometry, landscape, and architecture, profoundly shaping his artistic practice. In an effort to see the surroundings in a simpler form, Michael Muir depicts a new contemporary Australian landscape of streetscapes, architecture, and plant life. The solid colour blocks with shaky borders, which are achieved by applying the paint to his canvas using a palette knife, give the depicted reality an alternative dimension. 

Inspired by the experience of travel and viewing locations with fresh eyes, Muir’s works playfully oscillate between memory and reality, figuration and abstraction, the familiar and the unknown. Largely autobiographical, the artist’s body of work references his own childhood, and simultaneously that of his three sons, which connect the two generations and their distinct memories. The familiar and the unknown also come from his travelling, as a person with a multicultural background.

“I realised over time, that my approach to finding subject matter relates back to my personal experience of shifting homes and countries at a young age. There is a mix of excitement and trepidation when you arrive at a new place, and a natural instinct to seek out what is familiar and inviting within a new environment. When I travel now, I often make quick sketches, and gouache paintings utilising a camera and write ideas about feelings and spontaneous thoughts. Looking for a sense of vibrancy and belonging within the surroundings. When I bring these working ideas and studies back to the studio and start working on a larger scale, I slowly unravel the interplay of colour, composition, and form. The paintings purposely blend truth and fiction but also connect with early personal memories that set me on a path to looking at the world around me.”

Muir was the winner of the Mosman Art Prize 2014 and has been a finalist in a number of awards over the past decade including the Wynne, Sulman, and Fleurieu Art Prizes. His work is represented in Australia’s Artbank collection, Parliament House Art Collection, and private collections throughout Australia and internationally.