Michael Spencer MA HEA (Fellow) CV
Michael studied Theatre Design at Wimbledon School of Art in 1980, returning to achieve the first post-graduate award in the subject in 1991. A career as a professional Scenographer was accompanied by academic leadership at Central Saint Martins. Michael has had solo shows in London, represented the UK internationally in his discipline and spoken on creative practices at international fora such as CWA (The Conference for World Affairs) at Colorado College in the US.
Until 2020, my drawing had been functional - part of my role as a Scenographer. I then began following a passion for landscape art. This took the form of working en plein air in the green spaces close to where I live in urban South East London. It became part of my everyday routine and I currently have well over a thousand images of these spaces, created in all weather conditions. I am interested in the fact that a savagely competitive and resilient world sits in parallel to our own competitive and resilient environment.
Like most landscape artists, the challenge is to simultaneously record what I’m looking at and communicate the impact it has on me, both physically and psychologically. I record the place, date, and time of each encounter in folios, which become visual diaries of personal encounters. Although I use the same media in all my work, I adopt different uses of this media, even when confronting the same tree or aspect.