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About New Collection
Michael Chaplin is a familiar and distinguished
figure in the art world, nationally as well as internationally for his
outstanding talents as a painter, etcher, writer, teacher and more recently as
television personality on the extremely successful Watercolour Challenge on
Channel Four. He is about to embark on his third series, having entered on a
new stage in his teaching career which now reaches over 2.5 million budding
artists a day. His book Mike Chaplin’s Expressive Watercolours will be
published by Harper Collins in the autumn.
Originally trained at Watford School of Art where he studied graphic design,
Michael went on to complete a postgraduate course in printmaking at Brighton
College of Art. Whilst at Brighton he was elected as one of the youngest ever
associates of the Royal Watercolour Society, becoming a full member in 1997.
Thus he fulfilled a life long ambition to become a professional painter, a
desire he conceived from the age of 12. In both painting and printing Michael
remains a figurehead of the British scene, with his work held in both private
and public collection world wide. He continues to teach and run residential
schools throughout Britain and further afield, this year in Lucca.
Initial ideas and notes for his work are made on-site in sketchbooks and are
later worked up in his Maidstone studio where with his own press and printer,
he hand produces his exquisite etchings. Michael says of this technique, “
This is a painstaking process but it enables me to have complete and utter
control over the subtlety of this 500 year old process.”
He works in Britain and abroad, producing the majority of his foreign work in
the early morning or late evening, when the shadows are low and theatrical,
which enhances his technique of working loosely with the watercolour. This
gives the images an incredible lightness of touch, a quality not easily
achieved with such a difficult medium but one that he has perfected through the
painstaking discipline needed for etching.
With his gift for accurate draughtmanship he can depict building, motorways,
engineering works or Pulteney Bridge at Bath in intricate detail, registering
each subtle change of tone on surface materials, the gleams of colour on wet
roads or reflections in water. Or he can deliver the essence of a scene in
shorthand - quick light touches which blend together impressionistically. He is
a true heir to the great British tradition of watercolour painting.
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