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Michael Dwyer

Columbia, United States

As a kid, I was surrounded by modern art at home - mostly my father’s paintings. I loved visiting my dad's studio. I liked the spattered dishevelment, the smell of paint, and the paintings that I couldn't fully understand, but instinctively grasped as the works came to life. I knew at an early age that making art was something I wanted to pursue. A sense of movement has been an important element in my work for many years. Earlier pieces often conveyed a feeling of forms drifting in space. Then there was a shift toward using linear compositions to create direction. I wanted your eye to move along a variety of paths and have experiences along the way. My paintings relate to movement, physically, but also as it exists in music. I also found from my earlier collage work that I like shapes in my paintings to have crisp, assertive edges like those that came from using scissors. Pieces are sometimes informed by elements of our environment like billboards, architecture, and graffiti. Over the past few years, simplifying the forms and narrowing the parameters in my work has allowed me to make the paintings more focused, and to develop a more personal vocabulary. Ultimately, I’m always chasing that transcendent moment where colour, shape, and movement come together in a way that‘s thrilling and right.

In his decades-spanning practice, Michael Dwyer has focused on making abstract paintings that places colour, front and centre. Drawing inspiration from music, architecture, and modernist influences, Dwyer creates improvisational compositions that feel alive with rhythm and direction. Crisp-edged bars of translucent colour zigzag, float, and collide across his canvases, revealing layers of earlier decisions beneath the surface—each piece a visual record of its own evolution. His work explores the tension between control and improvisation, inviting viewers to follow the visual pathways he builds across the surface.

Artist Interview


Q: Growing up surrounded by modern art and your father’s studio must have been inspiring. How did those early experiences shape your own approach to abstract painting?


A: I absorbed some of the visual language of abstraction at an early age and without trying. It seeped in naturally, the way verbal language does. Early on, the idea that you could make something meaningful just by arranging shapes, colors, textures, etc., seemed perfectly normal. Seeing my dad at work in his studio and having abstract paintings in our home also gave me a sense that art was something that mattered - a worthwhile pursuit.


Q: Your work places colour at the forefront. What draws you to experiment with translucent colour and bold edges, and how do you decide on the palette for a piece?


A: Two of my earliest influences were Rothko and Diebenkorn. Both artists employed layering of translucent color. I was drawn to the idea of painting in a way that revealed where the artist had changed course. As a viewer, you could see the artist's thought process.


I went through a period of using collage in paintings and I found that I liked the crisp feel of shapes made with scissors. When I began painting hard-edged shapes later on, it felt like I was reconnecting with those forms that had sharp, definitive edges.

Interview
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