Betelgeuse Painting

Michael Daks is an English multi-disciplinary artist currently based in Rochester, Kent after a 20 year stint in NYC & Paris. He has worked as a fashion and portrait photographer in London, Paris, Milan and New York City, with clients including The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, The Tatler, Cosmopolitan, Variety, Rolling Stone,VIBE,The Source, The Observer Magazine, The Telegraph magazine, The Sunday Times magazine, Maxim, Brill’s Content, TV Guide USA, World of Interiors, BLITZ, iD, The Face, L’Uomo Vogue, Vogue Hommes International, SONY Music, BMG, RCA, MTV, Levi’s, Van Heusen, BELSTAFF, Drizabone, Arcadia, Burtons, Energie Jeans & GAP. The cover image of his book of nudes 'Just Good Friends' (Tara Dancing) was featured in the Sunday Times magazine ‘best of world photography’ section in 2013. He is currently working on 'In Hindsight' - a personal landscape, a retrospective of his landscape photographs from the past 30 years and 'Sculpture Garden' a book of sculptures in their environment taken at Versailles, Musee de Rodin and various other Sculpture Gardens around the world. His portraits of Dennis Potter & Kenneth Branagh are in The National Portrait Gallery permanent collection in Trafalgar Square. PAINTINGS I have always loved the Russian abstract painters from the time of the Revolution, and was inspired by Kazimir Malevitch to create my own series of abstract geometric paintings, mostly influenced by my 15 years living in New York. The roof tops, which are known as Tar Beaches, are painted with a bitumen solution to act as a sealant. It was also the material used to create the first ever surviving photograph by Nicéphore Niépce in 1827. This over years and exposure to extreme temperatures cracks and gives the appearance of tree bark or a baked earthen desert. I wanted to see if I could recreate that effect in my paintings through using both bitumen, and certain chemicals that allow a cracking effect to materialize over time. I wanted to create art that did not come from an art store, but from everyday life. So I chose to buy my supplies only from hardware stores. Everything except for the canvases were bought from there. Instead of artist brushes, I used decorators brushes, wooden sticks, sponges and paint rollers. A friend described them as 'Paintings for Rock Stars'.