Biography

Michael Alan-Kidd is an accomplished and much sort after London based portrait painter who was educated at the prestigious Slade School of Art where he graduted with honours. He spent six years training there developing his skills and experimenting with different techiques. His influences include early realist works, surrealist influenced works, imaginative geometrical figures, portraiture and transitional works.

In 2009 he decided to take the brave and bold step of displaying his works on his own website…

Philosophy

My philosophies as an artist have changed over the years. When I started at The Slade School I continued to paint in a conventional figurative precise manner, the models and still-life’s I had worked on as a foundation course student at Camberwell School of Art.

However, as my knowledge of artists work grew I became influenced by more imaginative conceptual painters. Having exceptional technical abilities I found the combination of contradictory traditional oil painting techniques and modern imaginative dream subject-matter mostly practised by the surrealist group truly fascinating. The pre 1940s work of Dali inspired me especially.

Nevertheless, I sensed his allegiance to the irrationality of dream subject-matter garbled the imagery of his work, only a few works standing out as exceptionally clear in meaning. Because of this observation I tried to paint fully-consciously worked out surrealist influenced works in the hope of conveying more readily understandable imagery.

As time moved on I noticed that some of the painted sculptural imagery in that works of Picasso more readily conveyed my concept so I became influenced by his imagery in that format. This led to a series of what have been termed geometrical figures utilizing the modern qualities of acrylic paints (mostly) in order to give them a clarity precision and vibrancy of colour different to that of oil paint ultilized by Picasso and the surrealists. The portraits are a way of subsidizing my more imaginative work and have provided me with various commissions and presence in some of the more prestigious exhibitions.

Recommendations

Over the course of my career I have been blessed to have met some wonderful and interesting people. A number of those acquaintances were so impressed with my work that they have recommended my services. You may recognize a few of them, such as:

• Sir Lawrence Gowing
• Bernard Cohen
• George Melly
• Melvyn Bragg
• Sir Christopher Booker
• John Player Portrait Award