Object Male Nude Series
This series was my investigation of representations of the male body. In many of the paintings and digital prints I purposely removed the head and focused on the torso. I was trying to de-humanise the male and reconstruct him as an object, almost as it the object was a Still-Life.
The contours and the sensuous nature of the male physique was explored. Classical portrayals with all the massive historical baggage appealed, my attempt to play whimsy with such an elevated and weighted chapter in Western Art.
The beauty of the male and the beauty of the female in Art are a problematic and searingly political arena that help inspire my works.
The bust and the face was separately used. The heads are a separate chapter in this series and are brought into a new realm using digital effects and colour to again play whimsically with this almost divine, sacred portrayal of the male and the concepts of gender and attractiveness. The head becomes object and the humanity takes a back seat. This was my attempt to provoke dialogue at the objectification of the female face and body, past and present.
Michael Worobec
Edinburgh
2021
Afro Series
The Garden Of Earthly Delights
This painting is part of my Afro series featuring the curved shape of this distinctive hair style. Within this space many shapes and constructs form. The grenade in this painting is a recurring motif. I find it a mixed metaphor for whimsy and destruction. A bomb and a rich, juicy pineapple. The colours in this work are bright, lively and friendly.
The figures are calm yet exude a quiet rebellion, peering out at the viewer with indignation, sadness or perhaps contempt. This is for the viewer to address and decide. The gender of these is purposely vague and the idea of temptation and excess in the title is a reference to the temptations of the flesh. The lush beauty, fragrance and colour, a garden, a metaphor for the delights on offer.
Oppression, violence, political strife and war are the every day lot of many cultures in the world today. My Afro people are totems that question and lament this reality.
My work has always been motivated by the pressures of social norms and the constructs of faith and belief structures. Often male in their hierarchy, the power and manipulation of societies are enforced by these Patriarchs. This mix of the individual and the society, both in competition for supremacy, is a balance that fascinates me. How much freedom can one person achieve when these forces are present? These manipulations of power are a desperate attempt to gain the upper hand and maintain the status quo. In short, tradition.
As a gay man, brought up Catholic, both in the Roman and Orthodox traditions, my mother Italian and father Ukrainian, have left me, on many occasions, in turmoil and despair as these huge religious dictums crashed into my world. Moral structures and commands did not sit well with my liberal and progressive feelings and resulted in many years of anxiety and self doubt.
Art and the creative process have always been my companions in this journey of self knowledge and acceptance and have given me a voice to express my passion for social justice and self freedom.
Michael Worobec
July 2021
Edinburgh
Star Sirens:
Butterfly Girl Stars And Grenades
This painting is part of my 'Star Siren Series'. The grenades in this painting are a recurring theme. I find them a mixed metaphor for whimsy and destruction. A bomb and a rich juicy pineapple. This exotic fruit sometimes seen in the extravagant head gear of Carmen Miranda, reduced to a performing poodle in a series of Hollywood films. The demands of celebrity for sex appeal and glamour, an industry oppressing women and fuelling self doubt and loathing. The colours in this work are bright, lively and friendly, again the superficial masking of a more disturbing truth. The figure is based on Rita Hayworth from a publicity photographs promoting her credentials as a star and a 'perfect' beauty.
Despite this image of goddess of glamour so often utilised in the media, there exists oppression, violence, political strife and war, the every day lot of many women and cultures in the world today. My 'Star Sirens' are totems that question this obsession and laments this reality.
My work has always been motivated by the pressures of social norms and the constructs of faith and belief structures. Often male in their hierarchy, the power and manipulation of societies are enforced by these Patriarchs. This mix of the individual and the society, both in competition for supremacy, is a balance that fascinates me. How much freedom can one person achieve when these forces are present? These manipulations of power are a desperate attempt to gain the upper hand and maintain the status quo. In short, tradition.
As a gay man, brought up Catholic, both in the Roman and Orthodox traditions, my mother Italian and father Ukrainian, have left me, on many occasions, in turmoil and despair as these huge religious dictums crashed into my world. Moral structures and commands did not sit well with my liberal and progressive feelings and resulted in many years of anxiety and self doubt.
Art and the creative process have always been my companions in this journey of self knowledge and acceptance and have given me a voice to express my passion for social justice and self freedom.
Michael Worobec
July 2021
Edinburgh
Grenade Heads: Grenade Head I
One in a series of three Grenade Heads and part of my Afro series, featuring the curved shape of this distinctive hair style. Within this space many shapes and constructs form. The grenades in this painting are a recurring motif. I find them a mixed metaphor for whimsy and destruction. A bomb and a rich, juicy pineapple. The colours in this work are bright, lively and friendly.
The figure is calm yet it exudes a quiet rebellion, peering out at the viewer in indignation, sadness or perhaps contempt. This is for the viewer to address and decide.
Oppression, violence, political strife and war are the every day lot of many women and cultures in the world today. My 'Grenade Heads' are totems that question and lament this reality.
My work has always been motivated by the pressures of social norms and the constructs of faith and belief structures. Often male in their hierarchy, the power and manipulation of societies are enforced by these Patriarchs. This mix of the individual and the society, both in competition for supremacy is a balance that fascinates me. How much freedom can one person achieve when these forces are present? These manipulations of power are a desperate attempt to gain the upper hand and maintain the status quo. In short, tradition.
As a gay man, brought up Catholic, both in the Roman and Orthodox traditions, my mother Italian and father Ukrainian, have left me on many occasions in turmoil and despair as these huge religious dictums crashed into my world. Moral structures and commands did not sit well with my liberal and progressive feelings and resulted in many years of anxiety and self doubt.
Art and the creative process have always been my companions in this journey of self knowledge and acceptance and have given me a voice to express my passion for social justice and self freedom.
Michael Worobec
July 2021
Edinburgh
The Rules Series
I was browsing one day in one of the many second hand/vintage shops that I seem to spend a lot of time in off late. I came across three bound compendiums of the Punch magazines dating back to around the 1930’s. Obviously this time in history was to say the least most eventful and tragic. The illustrations I came across as I leafed through the pages inspired this series where it seemed to me the old order, the rules of convention, steeped in outdated conformity and structure inspired a collection of digital designs using computer software that I intend to print in the future.
Michael Worobec
Edinburgh
2020
FRAGMENTS
The characters in my paintings illustrate windows to an archive; they portray a visit from the past. We come into existence as a blank page or screen. Genetics are in place to start us off; then external factors are marshalled and start to shape that blankness. Our personality, our self-image is played out in a theatre directed by experiences and events.
Geometric and sharp shapes, manifested in many of the works; they assemble to change and augment life. The wings of freedom and self-expression are clipped by social conventions, rules, bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia and violence. This solo show is an account, a personal archive where imposition, doubt and anxiety are chronicled.
Faces look out in various directions at us, the viewer, with an overhang of sadness and perhaps regret. Fading and at times merging into the background, their stoic quality could be seen as a rebuke to life, history and adversity, or perhaps a message of defiance, a plea not to be battered by these external and internal sources that undermine our collective and individual happiness.
Political events and interpersonal histories merge; they ebb and flow across these paintings. The flickering of a digital or analogue screen, the staining of a page in an old dusty book; all are evoked in and on these spectres.
My work illustrates or symbolises structures; physical, personal, societal, emotional or biological. I use abstract or figurative elements to bear testimony to our journey through life: Birth and entry, subsequent growth and flourishment, and the inevitable road to our demise and extinction. Scientific and mathematical shapes and signs appear: Circles, points of reference, perhaps on a map or a codex of cryptic writings.
Fragments emerged out of a picture in my head of a spacecraft, an automated vehicle travelling through time and space, many years after life existed on earth, an empty vessel that has become the depository of these Fragments, a bank of images, totems. These characters are representatives from various epochs in human history; perhaps ghosts. These shadows appear and disappear, blinking in the darkness. Perhaps some calamity on Earth led to human extinction? All that is left of humankind is this sad collection, a failing visual record. These characters, totems of humanity, are now the bare bones left behind after the passing of life.
Michael Worobec, Solo Show
London
October 2017
Abstracts: Geo and Bios
Inevitably at some point, growth is checked, constrained or ended. In nature this could be through a lack of nutrition, illness or even death. In these paintings the physical boundaries of the canvas dictates the ending of the scheme. Visual reality stops, yet the viewer can continue this process through their imagining, how the work would change and develop if the objects were freed and allowed to multiply and move away from the canvas edge.
The iconography of popular culture is replaced by strange and suggestive designs. Limbs, digits, intestinal like shapes squirm and writhe across the picture plane, creating a surreal choreography of movement. Warhol’s influence can be seen in the choice of colour, often strong and vivid. It is used to strengthen and reinforce the repeat, yet at other times, it is utilised to confuse and break down the scheme.
These paintings may be seen as a visual metaphor for the biological process of reproduction, growth and development, the complexity of personality and identity. On closer inspection, smaller, individual characters or organisms seem to exist, separate and independent of the mother image. Space, colour, shape and line, whether foreground or background, conspire to create puzzles that involve and engage the viewer.
These shapes separate into isolation or organise and collude to create pattern and to an extent order. Surfaces are either painted with flat colour or with light and dark creating a more nuanced surface and are more three dimensional in effect.
Growth and development can be both physical and emotional. In the complex and challenging experiences of life we battle with doubt, fear and vulnerability. My paintings attempt to bare witness to this struggle and imbue shapes with pathos and theatre that enlivens Abstracted forms that flash or perhaps are shadowed by humanity.These shapes appear to be suspended in space and time. Are they static or are they falling?
In short I wish to bring the drama and emotionality of Figurative Art to the sometimes cold and calculated world of Abstraction. My Abstracts are Totems and vehicles that animate the complexities of living.
Blog interview, January 2012 for Culturelabel.com
What inspires your artistic practice?
I am interested in bringing the mass produced into the realm of the one off. The dogmatic urge of the repeat and the endless variation and complexity of a pattern interests my aesthetic at present. I play with these rules and make decisions on colour and shape, deciding on the balance and counter balance of all these mass variables. I deconstruct the scheme of the repeat.
I design what I term a 'Mother' image. This is a mass, made up of four squares and is the identity, organism that exists either on its own in paintings such as ‘Orbital’ or as part of a wider order in a work such as 'Colour Crush'. Within these patterns, smaller 'beings' act and interact within the whole. I find these shapes have a character and life of their own, rather like amorphic/amoebic cartoon characters.
My paintings are metaphors for development and growth. The individual and the society. We exist, flourish and fail; yet we all contribute to the tapestry of life.
I love colour, I am inspired by Graphic art and the exuberance found in the visual delights of Pop art and popular culture, past and present.
You describe you work as organic abstracts, what attracts you to organic matter?
I am interested in the poetic and languid qualities of organic shapes; the soft lines mirror nature, its ebb and flow. I hope that these flowing lines enhance my works. The term abstract can be a bit cold, bringing to mind the white light of modernity, which I love.
The organic element is employed to evoke nature, and bring a sense of humanity into these non-figurative works. I love the clean and cool elements of abstraction and its bedfellow modernity. I feel we in Britain are afraid of this term and seek the old, the safe, and the character elements of tweeness. The word, 'character' usually evoked by people when describing houses and homes is an example of this fear.
I was trained at Edinburgh College of Art, where the importance of representative drawing and in particular, life drawing was promoted. I gained skills and the ability to render the illusion of reality and space on a two-dimensional surface and gained a love of drawing that I posses to this day. This said, I feel that to base my career on producing figurative and representational art does not inspire me at present as it did in the past. I love the aesthetic of architecture, interiors, fashion and design in general.
Although the ‘figurative’ does not excite at the moment, the knowledge and skills learnt from it over many years, has informed and improved my practice.
Do you remember the first work of art you made?
Yes. I think it was a painting of a lovely rich red car with big fat black wheels when I was in my first year at Primary school. I love beautiful designed cars to this day.
What is your favourite piece of art?
Now that would limit me, it's like asking an artist, what is your favourite colour. That would not do.
Art has many languages and styles. It would be like saying; ' I like the Italian language the best'. Other languages and cultures communicate and express their unique perspective. Separate and individual pieces of Art speak to us in different ways depending on our frame of mind or present life experience and emotion. What I loved in the past may now no longer have the same hold on me as it once did.
You have held many different jobs before becoming a full time artist; adventure playground worker, theatre and textile designer, a teacher etc…, have these experiences shaped your artistic practice?
Without doubt these varied roles have directed me into different worlds of experience. I have always been an artist. In every job I have utilised my skills and abilities. It is like a fixation, I express myself and interact with people with creativity as a conduit for me to bring out my personality and character. I love people. I love diversity. I am at my happiest surrounded by good company. The ability to get immersed in a good and absorbing conversation is my idea of happiness and contentment. I love a good talker.
Who are your favourite up and coming artists?
Look out for an artist/student still at Central St Martin's Art school, called Adrian Kiss. I taught him at A level and recognized a unique voice and talent. If his youth does not get in the way, he will become an artist to watch.
I feel Art schools in Scotland are still producing exciting and innovative artists. Every year it seems the Turner Prize has at least two Scottish individuals and many have gone on to win. Sorry, a bit of a nationalistic plug, well I am Scottish you know!