Michael MAJOR
20th century, England

Michael Major is a renowned oil painter with over 25 year's experience.
Initially an abstract painter, Michael Major uses the legacy of abstraction to bring a fresh vitality to the land and seascape convention. In his current work, the artist celebrates the luminosity of the North Norfolk coastline noting how the light is continually in flux, shaping and reshaping the contours and presence of the natural environment.
I 'escaped' to art school at 17, finally emerging with an MA from the RCA seven years later in 1975. On leaving and setting up a studio in Acton, I changed to oil painting and started painting abstract landscapes. I had my first solo exhibition in 1980 and showed paintings that were about air, light, movement, and poise. During the early 1980s, my paintings became darker and more complex. After a show in 1984, I began to realize that those paintings were leading into a cul-de-sac. The following years were my wilderness-completely lost.

For quite a while, we had been visiting the North Norfolk coast. Building a collection of pastel drawings, one day in 1988, I took one of these drawings and made a large-scale painting from it. I had the time of my life, as though a veil had been lifted from my eyes. Ever since then, I have been painting in my studio beaches, breakwaters, sky and sea, shallow water and wet sand, beach huts,sea defences, and occasionally people walking along the water's edge, using a sense of place to lead to 'somewhere else.'

Source: http://www.michael-major.co.uk/home.php